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PROCEEDINGS 



\ • 



STATE 



DISUNION CONVENTION, 



WORCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS. 



JANUARY 15, 1857. 



PHOXOGRAPHICALLY REPORTED BY J. M. W. YERRINTOX. 



BOSTON: 
PRINTED FOR THE COMMITTEE. 

185 7. 





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PROCEEDINGS 



STATE 



DISUNION CONVENTION, 



HELD AT 



WOECESTER, MASSACHUSETTS, 



JANUARY 15, 1857. 



PHONOGBAPHICALLY REPORTEa) BY J. M. W. TERRINTON. 



BOSTON: 

PRINTED FOR THE COMMITTEE. 

1857. 



L^ \j vvu "2- 






61602 
4 05 



I 



CALL OF CONVENTION. 



CALL FOR THE CONVENTION. 



P 



AYo, the undorsigned, citizens of Worcester, believing the result of the recent 
Presi(k'ntial Electi'on to involve four years more of Pro-Slavery Government, 
and a rapid increase in the hostility between the two sections of the Union : 

Believing this hostility to be the offspring, not of party excitement, but of 
a fundamental difference in education, habits, and laws : 

Believino- the existing Union to be a failure, as being a hopeless attempt to 
unite under one government two antagonistic systems of society, which diverge 
more widely with every year : . ■ . l 

And believing it to be the duty of intelligent and conscientious men to meet 
these facts with wisdom and firmness : 

Respectfully invite our fellow-citizens of Massachusetts to meet m Conven- 
tion at Worcester, on Thursday, Jan. 15, to consider the practicability, prob- 
ability, and expediency, of a Separation between the Free and Slave States, 
and to 'take such other measures as the condition of the times may require. 



Thos. W. Higginson, 
Thomas Earle, 
Henry H. Chamberlin, 
Scth llogers, 

D. C. Gates, 
O. D. Haven,- 
Ebeuezer Hemenway, 
Theophilus Brown, 
David McFarland, Jr., 
Lewis A. Bacom, 

H. G. O. Blake, 
O. F. Harris, 

A. R. Marsh, 
Elbridge Boy den, 
Ivers Gibbs, 

E. F. Rogers, 
Stephen S. Foster, 
Isaac Bartlett, 
Win. B. Earle, 
Ira T. Allen, 
Caleb C. Caprou, 
C. H. Cross, 

B. B. Marshall, 
I). R. Gates, 
V/m. D. Cady, 
Isaac Mason, 
William J. Brown, 
Allen Walker, 
Charles F. AUen, 
J. L. Tarbox, 



Wm. Henry Xourse, 
Alfred Wvman, 
S. D. Tourtclotte, 
Effingham L. Capron, 
Frederick A. M. Perry, 
Addison P. Smith, 
Ral])h T. Phiney, 
V. R. BuUard, 
Richard T. Buck, 
N. G. livman, 
T. P. Hastings, 
W. D. G. McVey, 
Isaac Smith, 
G. U. Campbell, 
Joseph A. HowLind, 
Thos. W. Houchin, 
E. S. Howes, 
Isaac Howes, 
Nathan Harkness, 
C. D. Marcy, 
J. H. Crane, 
Everett L. Sweet, 
Appleton Fay, 
George R. Johnson, 
J. B.^Bell, 
Wdliam Green, 
Peter Williams, 
J. S. Mowbray, 
David Brown, 
Jonathan A. SVhite, 



Alden B. Knight, 
George C. Rice, 
William Coe, 
Asa F. Rice, 
Leander Eaton, 
Daniel Lovering, 
John Brewer, 
Levi Moore, 
Levi Moore. Jr., 
Lawson Harrington, 
James McFarland, 
George G. Noyes, 
John A. Durkins, 
John Wright, 
Charles Sprague, 
Charles A. Kyle, 
Adams Foster, 
Asa Gates, 
M. L. Eastman, 
Eli Johnson, 
Levi L. Johnson, 
Otis Conant, 
S. H. Fuller, 
Bartholomew Moran, 
George W. Gould, 
Charles F. Noyes, 
Thomas Noyes, 
J. W. Marchant, 
Samuel May, Jr., 

(Leicester,) 
And others. 



PROCEEDINGS. 



In accordance with a Call previously issued, a State Convention, for 
the purpose of considering the " practicability, probability, and expedi- 
ency of a separation of the Free and Slave States," was held in the 
City Hall, Worcester, on Thursday, January 15, 1857. . 

The Convention was called to order by Rev. T. W. Higcjinson, of 
Worcester, and was organized by the choice of the following officers : — 

President : 
Hon. FRANCIS W. BIRD, of Walpole. 

Vice 'Presidents : 

Thomas Earle, of Worcester ; William Ashby, of Newbuvyport ; 

Wm. Lloyd Garrison, of Boston ; Alvan Ward, of Ashburnham ; 
Daniel Mann, of Sterling ; Charles Brigham, of Mai'lboro'. 

Secretaries : 
J. M. W. Yerrinton, of Boston ; S. D. Tocrtelotte, of Worcester. 

Upon taking the chair, the President read the Call for the Conven- 
tion. 

Finance and Business Committees were then appointed, as follows : 

Business Committee — T. W. Higginson, Worcester; Wendell 
Phillips, Boston ; Joel Smith, Leicester ; Elbridge Boyden, Wor- 
cester ; Lewis Ford, Abington. 

Finance Committee — Charles F. Hovey, Boston ; Edwin D. Dra* 
per, Milford; Charles K. Whipple, Boston. 



6 DISUNION CONVENTION. 

The President then addressed the Convention, as follows : — 

ADDRESS OF THE PBESIDEWT. 

Ladies and Gentlemen : 

I read this morning, in the New York Tribune, an extract from the 
Worcester jEgis, which, as it illustrates the present condition of things 
ahout us, I will read : — 

«< The truth is, that venom and passion have so dispossessed the New England 
heart of its natural decency, that it requires more moral courage in a son of old 
Massachusetts, or of the Granite State, to stand up, even upon his own acres, and 
express his own sentiments upon public policy, if they do not accord ^^'ith the 
W'hisperings of political demagogues and partisan saints in the popular ear, than 
it would for Foster or GaiTisoi^ to address a meeting under the very nose of Henry 
A. Wise. The time is coming, we patriotically trust, when the circumstance will 
not so exist ; but at present there is no denying its presence and vitality." 

Of course, my friends, no man who has been in politics as long as 
I have, no man who has been engaged in business as long as 1 have, 
is unaware of the fact, that it is as much as a man's political prospects 
and business p*-osperity are worth, (unless his position as a business man 
is perfectly assured,) and as much as his social position is worth, to dif- 
fer from his neighbors upon any questiori in this community. Still, I 
have felt, for the last four or five weeks, and particularly for the 
last two weeks, that as one of the humblest members of the Re- 
publican party of the last campaign, and one of the humblest mem- 
bers of the political organization that may hereafter be called to act 
politically against slavery, I desired to enter my protest against the 
construction which representative Republicans are putting upon the 
Republican platform, upon the present position of the party, and upon 
their future intentions. I undertake to say to my friends who belong to 
the Republican party, and who read no other papers but those of Bos- 
ton or Massachusetts, you know nothing at all about what the represen- 
tatives of the Republican party are doing at Washington. You do not 
know how leading Republicans at Washington are selling out the party. 
God knows, the Philadelphia platform is low enough ; but it took at least 
one step in advance of all other platforms. For the first time in the history 
of political parties in our country, it made this one issue with the Slave 
Power. We declared ourselves to be a party of one idea, recognizing the 
fact, that no political party can have more than ono paramount idea. The 
old Whig and Democratic parties professed other issues, but the real fact 
was, that there was but one idea in their platforms, and that was, which 
hould most actively perform the behests of slavery. They ridiculed us 
for our BufTalo platform, because, as they said, it contained but one idea; 



ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. T 

whereas, the only trouble with that platform was, that it attempted to 
present other issues. I say, the Philadelphia Convention took the position 
of opposition to the extension of slavery as their one idea; but the Phila- 
delphia Convention did not estop us from going further. There is not 
a word in it which prevents those who accept Lysander Spooner's doc- 
trine, that the Constitution is an Anti-Slavery instrument, and that under 
it we can, whenever we get the power, abolish slavery, from standing on 
that platform. But what say our friends in Congress ? Representative 
Republicans in Congress declare before the country and the world, that 
the Republican party do not intend ever to interfere with slavery in the 
States ; that they do not desire to do it ; that if they had the 
power, they would not exercise it ; that if they believed the Con- 
stitution gave the Federal Government power to abolish slavery, they 
would not vote for it. Says Gen. Wilson — " Senators have declared 
on this floor, that we have not disclaimed the right to interfere with 
slavery in the States. I understand the Senator from Ohio (Mr. Pugh) 
to say that we have not made that disclaimer. I say to that Senator — 
I say to all • — that it was intended by this expression — ' The rights of the 
States shall be preserved ' — to cover that and other questions of State 
rights." I simply desire to enter my protest, as one of the delegates to 
the Philadelphia Convention, against this construction of the " inten- 
tions " of that Convention. We did not " intend " that " State rights " 
means the right to enslave men and women. If we had so intended, 
we should have so said. 

Gen. Wilson says further — "We vindicate the rights of the States — 
the right of the Southern States, if they choose to hold men in slavery" ! 
This was Gen. Wilson's notion of State rights. With his private opin- 
ion we make no quarrel ; but such is not the doctrine of the Phila- 
delphia platform. 

Again he says — "I am opposed to slavery. I am in favor of its 
abolition every where where I have the power " — (the trouble is, he 
■disclaims the power to abolish it any where.) Gen. Wilson proceeds — 
" I want all men, who are opposed to slavery, to take a moderate and 
reasonable position, to abandon the extreme notions which those men 
(Wendell Phillips, &c.) entertain, hanish the negro discussions we are hav- 
ing in these Halls, and leave slavery in the States where the Constitution 
leaves it, to the care of the people of those several States. I believe 
that when that is done, the liberal, high-minded, just men of the South 
will, in their own time, and in their own way, bring about a safe eman- 
cipation " ! 



O DISUNION CONVENTION. 

Mr. Hale says — " The Republican party believe that in the States 
they have no more right to meddle w^ith slavery than they have to meddle 
with it in Turkey or Russia," The Republican party never said that ; 
and a great many of them do not believe it, and would not have acted 
with the party if the platform had announced that doctrine. 

Again he says — "I have said, over and over again, speaking in my 
representative character as a Senator on this floor, I have no desire to 
meddle with slavery in the States — not the slightest." Yet he adds — 
" I desire to see slavery abolished ; " and then says, " I do not desire to 
see the Constitution amended to give me the power to do it. I disclaim 
the power entirely. / do not %vant it. I would not take it if I could 
have it. The responsibility of what I now have to do is quite enough for 
me. But the way I want it done is, by appealing to the enlightened 
consciences of those who hold slaves " ! 

Says Mr. Sherman of Ohio — " If I had my voice, I would not have 
one single political Abolitionist in the Northern States. I act with the 
Republican party, with hundreds of thousands of others, merely be- 
cause the Republican party resists the extension, but does not seek the 
abolition of slavery." 

Mr. Smith, of Tennessee, asked — " Do I understand the gentleman 
to say that he does not desire to see the Abolitionists succeed ? " 

Mr. Sherman — " I do not desire to see them succeed " ! 

I might multiply similar quotations from speeches of prominent Re- 
publicans at Washington ; all, with only the exceptions of Gov. Seward 
in the Senate, and brave " Old Gid " in the House, take the same 
ground, that the E-epublican party never intends to take a step in 
advance. I came here to-day expressly to utter my public protest, 
as a Republican, against this construction of our platform. It is worse 
than idle for politicians to declare what they will or will not do here- 
after. They are mere waifs upon the surface of the mighty stream of 
ideas. Man proposes, but God disposes. 

Well, friends, the battle has been fought, politically, against the ex- 
tension of slavery. It has been fought and lost. No intelligent man 
doubts that. The verdict of the country has been given unequivocally 
in favor of the extension of slavery. It cannot be denied that this is 
the practical result of the last campaign. The only question now is, 
what are we to do .'' Arc we to stand still — those of us who act under 
the Constitution — and fight over dead issues, as the Whig party did over 
banks, tarifis, and sub-treasuries, or are we, as intelligent, progressive 
men, to prepare to meet the coming crisis.'' I hold that our duty, as 



ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. 9 

Republicans, is to prepare for the future. The verdict of the country 
has been rendered in favor of the pretended principles of the Nebraska 
Bill. Slavery goes wherever the people choose to carry it. The de- 
cision of the Supreme Court, in the Scott case, is soon to be given, 
affirming that extreme Southern doctrine, that slavery goes every where 
under the Federal flag. These are the issues we have got to meet, in 
the ballot-box or out of it, under the Constitution or over it, in the Union 
or out of it ; and it is of no use for politicians at Washmgton to 
attempt to disguise that fact, or keep back the rising public sentiment of 
the country, or repress the popular indignation against slavery. The 
battle is between freedom and slavery, and we must meet it. Of 
course, I need not remind our friends that we are to be denounced as 
traitors, and treated as traitors, if we are to believe representative Re- 
publicans at Washington. There is no reason why every one of us 
should not be arrested as traitors, under the construction put upon the 
Constitution by the Federal authorities ; and it would be no greater 
outrage upon any of our rights to imprison us to-night in Boston as 
traitors, than was the arrest of the members of the Topeka Legislature 
in Kansas. Of course, I do not refer to the policy of that movement. 
It was a sad mistake ; but they had a perfect right to meet, if they 
would. But our right to assemble peaceably to discuss grievances is 
not only denied by the administration, but by Republican presses and 
Republican leaders. The Providence Journal says : — 

" The Northern Disunionists will hold their Convention at "Worcester on the 
15th inst., ' to consider the practicability, probability and expediency of a 
separation' between the free and slave States, and to take such other measures 
as the condition of the times may requu-e.' It is neither practicable, proba- 
ble, nor expedient. It camiot be done, and it ought not to be done ; and those 
who ivy to do it, only add treascH to foUy, reducing themselves to the level of 
the nuUifiers of the South, and ui.like them, wanting the sympathy of any con- 
siderable portion of then- own section of the country." 

Gen. Wilson converts the ^hole Republican party into hangmen, in 
the following extract from his speech in the Senate : — " In the public 
press, and before the people every where, the doctrine was maintained 
that we were for the Union ; and if any men, North or South, laid their 
hands upon it, they should die, if we had the power, traitor deaths, and 
leave traitor names in the history of the Republic." 

Now, if that means any thing at all, if it is not the merest hrutum 
fuhnen that ever a child uttered, it means that if Gen. Wilson and the 
Republicans had the power, they would hang every one of us upon the 
next tree. They proclaim us traitors, because we are laying hands upon 



10 DISUNION CONVENTION. 

hisUnion. I say, Liberty and Union, if it may be ; Liberty first, and 
Union afterward, if need be. Liberty in the Union and under the Con- 
stitution if possible ; but Liberty out of the Union and over the Consti- 
tution, if it must be. Liberty any how, and that speedily ! (Loud 
applause.) If that be treason, let Gen. Wilson and Franklin Pierce 
" make the most of it " ! These declarations mean something when 
they are uttered by the Federal authorities, and when they are reiterated 
by our own Massachusetts men. Representatives and Senators in Con- 
gress. We must not assume that it is mere idle talk. They mean 
something ; and we are to assume that we come here with halters 
around our necks. 

Gentlemen, I occupy this position altogether unexpectedly to myself. 
I came here entirely as a private individual ; and at a later hour, I had 
intended to say a few words, somewhat differently from what I have said. 
But I have felt that it is time that this question of abolition should be met, 
and I came here to enroll myself among those who believe that the 
mission of this nation is Freedom, and who go for the abolition of slavery 
at the price of dissolution, if need be. At the same time, I do not be- 
lieve that a dissolution of the Union is to be hastened or retarded by any 
acts of ours, or the Union-savers. I do not see how dissolution is pos- 
sible. 

I look upon the map, and I do not see where you can find the geo- 
graphical line of division. Of course I believe, with every intelligent 
man, in the eternal antagonism between freedom and slavery. There is 
no union between the North and the South. We have no rights. This 
Union never did, does not now, and never can, governed by the same 
influences as now, give us any rights as members of the Northern por- 
tion of the Union. It never was worth any thing to the free States, 
except that, at the commencement of the government, our fathers, hav- 
ing just emerged from the Revolutionary war, felt the necessity of 
Union to prepare for the " common defence." In that age, when it was 
supposed that rights could be maintained only by war, and the power of 
he strongest was the only power recognised, thoy felt the necessity of a 
Union to protect the infant Republic from foreign aggressions. That 
necessity no longer exists ; and it seems to me that no sane and sensi- 
ble man, who looks upon this matter apart from any political aspirations, 
can make himself believe that this Union is of any value to any body 
in the free States now. Still, it is an existing fact, and I cannot see 
where the division is to lake place. But that freedom and slavery can 
exist under this form of government much longer, so long as I believe 



EESOLUTIONS. It. 

there is a God in heaven, so long as I believe in eternal right, seems to 
me impossible. It cannot be. 

Gentlemen say, " We do not propose to meddle with slavery in the 
States. In the progress of ages, it may be abolished ; but we shall not 
interfere with it." Does any man who believes in God and right believe 
that these four millions of slaves can increase to eight millions, in the 
next generation, and this government hold together ? It seems to me 
that the antagonism is necessary, inevitable, and that unless slavery is 
speedily abolished, a separation, in some form or other, must come. 
How it is to come, I do not know. My only hope is in framing a public 
opinion at the North as true to freedom as that of the South is to slavery, 
and then that public opinion will find an effective form of expression. 
Undoubtedly, the moral sentiment of the free States against slavery is 
stronger to-day than it ever was before, but it lacks efficient organiza- 
tion. There was opposition enough to slavery excited by the repeated 
outrages of the Slave Power in Congress, the passage of the Nebraska 
Bill, the Kansas outrages, and the assault upon Mr. Sumner, to have 
annihilated the Slave Power, if it had been allowed to exert itself. The 
jar was charged overwhelmingly, and if the wires had been directed to 
the citadel of slavery, it would have been blown to atoms ; but the 
operators conducted the charge into the territories, and it was lost. We 
need an efficient organization of the anti-slavery sentiment of the free 
States. Is it possible ? I leave this to others wiser than myself to 
decide. 

The Hutchinson Family then sang one of their fine old anti-sla- 
very songs, which was loudly applauded. 

Rev. T. W. HiGGiNSON said he had some seventy pages of manu- 
script, in the form of letters from half the notabilities of the country, 
but time would permit him to read only extracts from a few of them. 
[See Appendix.] 

Mr. HiGGiNsoN, after reading extracts from several letters, reported 
the following resolutions, from the Committee on Business : — 

KES OLUTIONS. 

Resolved, That the meeting of a State Disunion Convention, attended by 
men of various parties and affinities, gives occasion for a new statement of prin- 
ciples and a new platform of action. 

Resolved, That the cardinal American principle is now, as alwaj^s, liberty ; 
while the prominent fact is now, as always, slavery. 

Resolved, That the conflict between this principle of liberty and this fact of 



12 DISUNION CONVENTION. 

slaTery has been the whole history of the nation for fifty years; while the only 
result of this conflict has thus far been to strengthen both parties, and prepare 
the way for a yet more desperate struggle. 

Resolved, That in this emergency, we can expect little or nothuig from the 
South itself, because it is sinking deeper into barbarism every year ; 

Nor from a Supreme Court, which is always ready to invent new securities ior 

slaveholders ; 

Nor from a President, elected almost solely by Southern voters ; 

Nor from a Senate, which is permanently controlled by the Slave Power; 

Nor from a new House of Pepresentatives, which, in spite of om- agitation, 
will be more pro-slavery than the present one, though the present one has at 
len<^th granted all which slavery asked ; 

Nor from political action, as now conducted; for the Republican leaders and 
presses freely admitted, in public and private, that the election of Fremont was, 
politicallv speaking, ' the last hope of freedom.' And even could the North cast 
an united vote in 1860, the South has before it four years of annexation previous 

to that time. 

Resolved, That the fundamental difference between mere political action and 
the action we propose is this : that the one requires the acquiescence of the Slave 
Power, and the other only its opposition. , 

Resolved, That the necessity of disunion is written in the whole existing char- 
acter and condition of the two sections of the country — in their social organiza- 
tion, education, habits and laws — in the dangers of our white citizens in Kansas 
and of our colored ones in Boston — in the wounds of Charles Sumner and 
the laurels of his assailant — and no government on earth was ever strong enough 
to hold together such opposing forces. 

Resolved, That this movement does not seek merely disunion, but the more 
perfect union of the free States by the expulsion of the slave States from the 
confederation, in which they have ever been an element of discord, danger and 
disgrace. 

Resolved, That it is not probable that the ultimate severance of the Union will 
be an act of deliberation or discussion, —but that a long period of deliberation 
and dLscussion must precede it : and this we meet to begin. 

Resolved, That henceforward, instead of regarding it as an objection to any 
system of policy, that it will lead to the separation of the States, we Avill proclaim 
that to be the highest of all recommendations, and the greatest proof of states- 
manship ; and wc will support, politically or other\vise, such men and measures 
as appear to tend most to this result. 

Resolved, That by the repeated confession of Northern and Southern statesmen, 
"the existence of the Union is the chief guaranty of slavery ; " and that the des- 
pots of the Avhole world have every thing to fear, and the slaves of the whole 
world every thing to hope, from its destruction, and the rise of a fi-ce Northern 
Republic. 

Resolved, That the sooner the separation takes place, the more peaceful it 
will be ; but that peace or war is a secondary cottsidcration, in view of our present 
perils. Slavery must be conquered, " peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must." 



SPEECH OF REV. SAMUEL MAY, JR. 13 

The Convention was next addressed by Rev. Sajiuel May, Jr., of 
Leicester, as follows : — 

speech of ebv. samuel may, jb. 

Mk. President : 

I desire to occupy the few moments before adjournment with an ex- 
pression of the interest with which I first read the call for this Conven- 
tion. I saw it with a degree of satisfaction which I have seldom felt in 
the case of any other meeting for the furtherance of the Anti-Slavery 
cause ; and I rejoiced that the time had come when there wqm to be a 
meeting of Massachusetts men and women to consider if the time has 
not fully come when it is their duty to make a broad line of separation, 
in every particular, between themselves and slavery. 

Sir, the only thing which has troubled me since I have sat here to-day, 
has been to see indications of a feeling of distrust and fear in some 
quarters with regard to the position we take in holding this meeting. It 
would seem, from some remarks here, that there is a hesitation at being 
identified whh this Convention ; and the number present, though respect- 
able, certainly, yet when we remember that this is a State Convention, 
does not indicate that spirit of courage, determination and zeal, which 
ought to charactei'ize Massachusetts in such an hour and on such a 
question as we are assembled to consider. 

But, sir, I desired to take the floor mainly to express my devout thanks 
to God that I have lived to see the day when a Convention is called to 
consider this question of the longer continuance of our Federal Union, — 
when I may be a member of that Convention, and declare my own con- 
viction before God, that it is time, high time, and long has been time, 
when we should cut for ever the bloody bond which unites us to the 
slaveholders, slave-breeders and slave-traders of this nation, and hence- 
forth have no part nor lot with them in the iniquity and infamy which 
they are determined to perpetuate, and in which so long they have 
made us, or we have consented to be made, instruments and partici- 
pators. The idea of " treason," we ought to cast from us with con- 
tempt ; we ought to put it beneath our feet at once and for ever. We 
ought to remember, sir, that " old man eloquent," when he arose on the 
floor of the House of Representatives, ([ wish to God Massachusetts had 
representatives there now with the same spirit in them !) to present the 
petition of the Haverhill shoemakers for a dissolution of the Union, and 
the representatives of slavery sprang up on every side with hisses, cry- 
ing out " Treason, treason ! " and demanding his expulsion. The old 



14 DISUNION CONVENTION. 

man calmly called on the Clerk of the House to read the Declaration of 
Independence, and the Clerk began : — " We hold these truths to be 
self-evident : that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Crea- 
tor with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and 
the pursuit of happiness ; that to promote these ends, governments are 
instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of 
the governed ; that when any government becomes subversive of these 
ends, IT IS the right of the people to alter or abolish it." Again 
the hisses went up, and the old man said, " Read it again." " It is the 
right of the people to aher or abolish it." " Read it again ! " said Mr. 
Adams, and the Clerk read it again, until those men were shamed into 
silence. We want such men now-a-days. We want men who will put 
their foot upon this cry of " Treason." In the name of ail that is rea- 
sonable and just, I ask, if our fathers had the right to make a Constitu- 
tion, have we not the right to unmake it ? And is it not our duty to 
unmake it, when it proves a failure and a curse ? Or, if we may not 
say a word about this Heaven-defying Union, let us be off to Russia, 
and become the servants of the Czar, or hide ourselves in some servile 
place, and never dare to call ourselves freemen again. The time has 
come when we are to decide whether there is any manliness or justice 
left in the land ; whether we will blink this question for ever, and like 
miserable cowards, turn it over to our children, for them to grapple 
with, and compel them to grow up ashamed of their fathers and mothers, 
who dared not resist nor denounce the overgrown wickedness of their 
day. 

Theodore Parker, in his letter, has told us a very good story of a man 
and his termagant and vicious wife, — a story which might have been 
made true of the nation as long ago as when Missouri first applied for 
admission to the Union as a slave State, for then the Northern husband, 
had he been firm and honest, might have maintained his rights, and pos- 
sibly the Union too. But I remember, sir, another story of a man and 
his wife, which I think much better illustrates our present condition. In 
this story, the wife usually got the upper hand in their disputes, and 
often enforced her words by blows. One day, the husband, to escape 
from the effects of his wife's temper, crawled under the bed, and there 
lay growling and grumbling until she ordered him to be still. "No," 
said he, " I won't be still ! As long as I have the spirit of a man in me, 
I won't be still ! " (Great merriment.) 

Sir, you rightly said, tliat the thing of all others needed at this time 
is, the formation of an earnest, resolute, courageous public sentiment ; 



SPEECH OF REV. SAMUEL MAY, JR. « 15 

but let us look at one question behind that. How are we to form it, 
when our hands are clasped with the slave-trader and slave-breeder? 
There is the trouble. Mr. Garrison, Abby Kelley Foster, and a 
noble band of men and women — few but fearless — have tried to form 
that public sentiment for twenty years and upward. Why is it not 
stronger and better ? Because, sir, our union with slavery has been all 
the time sapping our moral foundations. Our union with the slaveholder 
continually paralyzes the Northern conscience, and makes us cowards. 
There is the difficulty. I recall a piece of local history which illus- 
trates this point. I would not speak too confidently, but I fear that even 
Worcester county does not stand, on this question of Union or Disunion^ 
as high as it did in 1845. In that year, there assembled in this very 
hall a large convention, from every part of the county, called to protest 
against the Annexation of Texas to the United States. I was present in 
that Convention, as a citizen of Leicester. Judge Strong, of Leomin- 
ster, was President of the Convention, and into it came such men as 
Levi Lincoln, Emory Washburn, Charles Allen, Abijah Bigelow, and 
others. It had been called without reference to party politics, yet some 
were of the opinion, which afterwards grew to be the general convic- 
tion, that the design of the leaders was to secure the vote of the County 
and State for Henry Clay. But I repeat, it was not called on a Clay 
basis, or a Whig basis, but it was to all citizens of Worcester county. 
And this hall was filled, and resolutions were introduced and adopted, 
strongly protesting against the annexation project. But there was no 
point in the resolutions — nothing from which the South or the North, 
the country or the world, could infer any thing else but that, though 
Massachusetts protested against annexation, still, if the thing were done, 
she would quietly submit to it. Disappointed and mortified that Massa- 
chusetts had no truer and loftier word to utter, in such an hour, a mem- 
ber of that Convention rose, and on his own responsibility moved a res- 
olution to this efTect : — "That the annexation of Texas to the Union 
would be a just and sufficient cause for a dissolution of the Union." 
This resolution was received with acclamation ; and though the leading 
men of the Convention, and the Business Committee, protested against 
it, and urged that it should be withdrawn, yet it was not withdrawn, but 
went to vote, and a respectable majority of the Convention adopted it. 
But having been adopted in the face of such opposition, the defeated 
gentlemen took the attitude of suppliants, and begged the majority, as 
they had had the pleasure of a triumph, to reconsider it, as it might 
injure the good etlect of what else the Convention had done ! This 



16 DIStNION CONVENTION. 

weak and inconclusive reasoning had sufficient effect upon a few who 
had voted with the majority (I will call no names, sir, now) to induce 
them to reconsider their votes, and so the resolution was lost. But the 
fact remains, that nearly two hundred men, on that day, twelve years 
ago, adopted that resolution with acclamation ; and I confess to some 
doubt whether we should get such a vote as that to-day, in a similarly- 
called Convention in this county. Taking the country at large, I have 
no doubt that there has been a great advance on this point, and that this 
Union is no longer worshipped as it has been, and set above Right, Jus- 
tice, and God himself. Yet, when I see such men as Henry Wilson, 
and even Charles Sumker, refusing to touch this question, I cannot but 
fear that the twelve years which have elapsed have seen, in the minds 
of many Massachusetts men, a great degeneracy, while they will un- 
doubtedly show great progress in other quarters. And I know, sir, my 
own soul tells me, that there can be nothing more fatal to the formation 
of such a public sentiment as you have well described as indispensable, 
than our continuance in union with the Slave Power. It is this which 
corrupts and weakens us, and always must. 

Mr. President, you said there was a difficulty in drawing the line of 
separation. In answer to that, allow me to give the reply of a man who 
has been an Abolitionist, faithful and true as steel, from the beginning, 
always stepping forward, never backward, — I mean Francis Jackson, 
of Boston. (Applause.) "When he was asked where he would draw 
the line, " I would draw it," said he, " directly here " — describing with 
his hands a circle round his own person. But, sir, if a further reply be 
called for, we say, Let Massachusetts draw the line around her own 
borders ; let New England draw it around her borders, that she may 
defend the slave, and no longer be his overseer. (Applause.) New 
England, sir, has all the elements of a nation, — industry, energy, en- 
terprise, skill, wealth, knowledge, — ability to feed and clothe herself 
and her children ; and if she chooses, she can do it against the world. 
But who would be against her in that just and honorable position ? Be- 
lieve me, sir, none of whom she would have the slightest fear. She 
would have very few enemies in such a position. But you may be sure 
she would not stand alone. By the time that New England has rubbed 
her eyes and got ready to take this stand, she will find many others 
ready to stand with her. In the name of God, I say, sir, let us give 
such an impulse to-day to this desire for a new Union, on the basis of 
freedom, justice and righteousness, as can never be mistaken, and never 
be again rolled back ! 



SPEECH OF HON. F. W. BIRD. IT 

Sir, this is not a mere question of expediency ; it is not whether the 
Republican party, or any party, is going to be benefitted by this move- 
ment or not. We are now, while in this Union, ourselves conspirators 
against the rights and liberties of our fellow-men. We are co-partners 
in an infernal scheme for depriving men and women of their God-given 
and inalienable rights. We are members of a Union which, by the con- 
current testimony of the clearest-headed men. South as well as North, 
is now, and long has been, the chief means of sustaining slavery, and 
giving it its vitality. It is not a question, therefore, of expediency. It 
is one of duty before High Heaven. It is our duty to separate our- 
selves from all connection with the dealer in human flesh, with the 
oppressor of his kind ; and if we may not, as we do not propose to do, 
go on to his plantation, and say, "You sliaJl liberate your slaves ! " we 
have a right, and it is our duty to say to him, " If you will insist on hold- 
ing your slaves, you shall do it v/ithout our help ! " (Applause.) 

speech of hon. f. "w. bird. 

Ladies and Gentlemen : 

Among the letters on file are one from Charles F. Adams and an- 
other from George R. Russell. I take the liberty to make a single 
remark in relation to them, and that is this, — that the three delegates 
from the old Adams and Mann District to the Philadelphia Convention 
are represented in this Convention to-day — Charles Francis Adams 
and George R. Russell by letter, and the third in the person of the 
President ; and I undertake to say, that our construction of the purpose 
of the Philadelphia Convention is quite as good as that of gentlemen in 
Washington. I do not claim any right to interpret that platform, but 
this single fact, taken in connection with what I have said in regard to 
the position of Republican leaders in Washington, shows a wide diver- 
gence of opinion in regard to that matter. 

And here let me say one word in relation to Gen. Wilson. The idea 
contained in his letter is, that we are to accomplish all our anti-slavery 
measures by political action. God forbid, that knowing the General so 
lonp as I have, I should be supposed to entertain the slightest doubt of 
his perfect sincerity and integrity as an anti-slavery man. But lie views 
every thing from the politician's stand-point, liable, as we all are, to bias 
in relation to supposed interests. He believes the ballot is omnipotent, 
He believes in that nonsense of Pierpont about the ballot, — 

" That executes a freeman's v.ill 
A.S liffhtnin!? does the will of God." 



18 DISUNION CONVENTION. 

He believes that, even after the ballot-stuffing in San Francisco and the 
election of the Bogus Legislature in Kansas ! And believing that, and 
strangely ignorant, as it seems to me, or strangely shutting his eyes to 
the political history of the past thirty years, and even ever since the 
formation of the Constitution, which shows a constant lowering of the 
standard with every triumph of the Slave Power, he still believes that 
political action can successfully resist the Slave Power, the extension of 
slavery, and the perpetuation of slavery propagandism in our country. 
Of course, I do not believe it. Look at the political organizations in 
Massachusetts. Look at public sentiment, as expressed in its political 
organizations. I believe there is a vast amount of anti-slavery senti- 
ment here ; but as developed in existing political organizations, what 
have we got, what have we had ? Some one said, in regard to Know- 
Nothingism, that it was an institution for raising small potatoes ; but we 
have learned more than that — that it is an institution for raising rotten 
potatoes. But worse than that, when we met here last autumn, our 
friends from Washington came on, and begged us to help raise rotten 
potatoes. Well, we declined, and we came near having a pretty bad 
fight about it. We wanted to try and see if we could not raise sound 
potatoes ; but finally we made a compromise — as we always do in this 
country. (Laughter.) The other party said, " Well, if you will not help 
us raise rotten potatoes, agree not to raise any, and leave us to raise 
the rotten ones." We agreed to it. But what did the rascals do after 
that? Why, they abused us like pickpockets, because we did not turn 
to and help them raise rotten potatoes ; that is, because we did not vote 
for Gardner. (Laughter and apphuise.) A few of us tried to set out 
some slips of the old Quincy stock, which we knew would not be sub- 
ject to the rot. Heavens, how they abused us! 

But what a crop of rotten potatoes we have raised here in Massachu- 
setts ; from that huge " carbunculous lie" that has broken out on the body 
politic of Massachusetts, and is enthroned in the State House for another 
year, down to those exceedingly small potatoes which have been trans- 
planted to the lower House of Congress ! Look at the men Massachusetts 
sends to the House ! With one or two exceptions, every one ought to be 
in a Hospital, the State Prison, or the Primary School. (Laughter and 
applause.) These are the men we returned the other day, except, thank 
God ! here in the Ninth and Eleventh Districts. (Renewed applause.) 
This is the anti-slavery public sentiment incarnated in the political organ- 
izdtions of Massachusetts. 

Is there no hope of an eflfective political organization against slavery .> 



SPEECH OF HON. F. W. BIRD. 19 

The Republican party, if it ever enters the field again, must meet the 
issue presented by the Slave Power, and that is, Freedom every where 
or Slavery every where. This issue is boldly made by the slavery prop- 
agandists in Congress. Gov. Brown, of Mississippi, says : — " The sim- 
ple truth is, Mr. President, there is not one man in a thousand who 
knows any thing of slavery practically that does not believe it to be the 
normal condition of the negro race " ! Mark that — the normal condi- 
tion of the whole race ! Mr. Mason, of Virginia, says : — 

" Sir, I hold this to be the constitutional doctrine : The institution of slavery- 
existed when the Constitution Avas formed ; it is recognised there as an existing 
social institution. It is not only protected by the dutj- imposed upon the Federal 
Government to see to the rendition of fugitives from it, but it is elevated into the 
element of political power hy the Constitution ; it is represented and made an 
element of political power. That is the contract into which we entered. I say, 
then, that being so under the Constitution, and in the spirit and tone of the 
Constitution, we have a right to the just and legitimate expansion of the institu- 
tion ; and if there were a po\\'er in the Federal Government to restrict or limit 
that expansion, it would be perfectly indifferent to us whether it should be 
exercised by prohibiting its expansion within the States where it exists, or outside 
their limits." 

The power of Congress to prohibit slavery in the Territories is as 
stoutly denied as the power to prohibit it in the States. When the' pub- 
lic sentiment of the Free States is as true to freedom as that of the 
South is to slavery, we shall have no difficulty in finding power in the 
Constitution to deal with slavery in the States as we now propose to 
deal with it in the Territories. Let us start with the Democratic doc- 
trine that the power which passes an act can repeal it. We will say to 
Texas, — "Emancipate your slaves, or we repeal the act annexing 
Texas." We then take Arkansas, Florida, Missouri, — for surely when 
the Slave Power has repealed a part of the act admitting Missouri, we 
can repeal the balance. And by the time we had gone through with 
the new Slave States, the Slave States of the old Thirteen would begin 
to shake in their shoes, and we would very soon fulfil the guarantee of 
a " Republican form of government" to all the States. All we want, 
my friends, is a public sentiment which shall hate slavery as you and I 
hate it. Shall we get it before it is for ever too late ? 

The false and fatal element of American politics is "compromise" — 
that is, the idea that the Constitution is the paramount law, and when it 
requires us to do certain things contrary to the law of God or the law of 
our own conscience, we must obey it. It is this that compels our friends 
at Washioiiton to take the low position they occupy. They say, — " In 
our individual capacity, we have our own opinions about slavery, but in 



20 DISUNION CONVENTION. 

our representative capacity, as under the Constitution, we are bound to 
accept the interpretation of the courts, and we pledge ourselves never 
to interfere with slavery." That is the doctrine preached by venal, cor- 
rupt, mercenary polhicians, of both sections of the country, and im- 
pressed upon the conscience of the North by the " lower law" clergy. 
It is that which is corrupting and demoralizing and debauching us all ; 
and from that, there is no escape, politically, except in an interpretation 
of the Constitution which shall make it a charter of Freedom, and not a 
bond of Slavery. 

My friends, I have trespassed longer upon your patience than I in- 
tended. I am obliged to leave the city in the next train, and let me say 
one word more. You all read, in the accounts of the whipping of Mr. 
Senator Bell's slaves, that the poor wretches endured the tortures with 
heroic contempt and even joy, exclaiming, " Fremont and his men hear 
every blow ! " Our gallant leader, I doubt not, did hear every blow, 
and would gladly have led on to the rescue ; but, alas, alas, " his men " 
at Washington did not, would not hear a blow ! They do not desire to 
meddle with slavery in the States. Let us, my friends, by our doings, 
to-day, declare that we hear the blows that fall at every moment upon 
the backs of our brethren and sisters in the house of bondage. 

The Hutchinsons were then invited to sing, and kindly responded, 
giving the song entided " True Freedom — the way to gain it." 

It being one o'clock, the Convention then adjourned to two o'clock, 
P. M. 



AFTEIIXOON SESSION. 

Dr. Makn, of Sterling, Vice President, called the Convention to order, 
and proceeded to address the audience as follows : — 

SPEECH OF DR. DAWIEL MATsrJST. 

Ladies and Gentlemen : 

I wish for an immediate separation of the free portion of our country 
from the slave portion. It is a position to which I have too tardily come, 
but which my sense of duty an(J patriotism compels me now to take. 
I will briefly show you the grounds of my position, and that they are 
broad enough to accommodate every true patriot. 

And, firstly, why should we not separate ? Of what advantage is our 



SPEECH OF DR. DANIEL MANN. 21 

so-called " Union " to ourselves or to humanity ? The only possible 
pretences that ever were plausible are, that it aids to support the ex- 
penses of government, and gives strength to meet war and invasion. If 
any body is so far behind the age as to suppose an invasion of the Free 
States possible, or that, in any emergency, our men could not drive off 
the invaders, or our women capture them, he is so obsolete a fossil that 
even the story of the Revolution will be news to him, and he will learn 
with surprise that some seven or eight of our present Free States did^ 
some seventy-five years ago, when their whole combined power was less 
than several of them now possess singly, actually resist and repel an 
invasion by the first maritime and military power in the world ; and did, 
m several deliberate and determined campaigns and desperate pitched 
battles, demonstrate the homely axiom that " Yankees can't be beat." 
Since that time, the number of our Free States has more than trebled, 
and each separate State has more than twice trebled its power. So that, 
if all the world should combine to beat us now, they could not begin to 
do it ; and besides, no power in the world has the least desire or thought 
of attempting it. 

But if invasion were possible, and we were weak enough to want help, 
could the Slave States give it ? Past history will answer this question 
also. In that same war of the Revolution, when help would have been 
acceptable, they could not give it. While the North was pouring forth 
her young men and old, from every town, village and hamlet, and emp- 
tying her treasuries and granaries for the common defence, the Sguth 
was sending her miserable excuses to the Continental Congress for not 
supplying her quota of men and arms, — " Because," said they, " if we 
do so, our slaves will rise and cut our throats." And at the same time, 
they were endeavoring to negotiate a separate peace with the invader,^ 
with the proposition to remain neutral during the war, and afterwards 
join whichever parly should prove victor. It is now time for that part 
of the story of the Revolution to be told as loudly, as plainly and fre- 
quently, as the rest of it. It has hitherto been the policy of our history 
• to wink at the imbecility and treachery of the South, and to let them 
share the honors, although they skulked from the dangers, of the war. 
Henceforth, while the pencil of truth paints that bright page of our coun- 
try's history for our emulation and glory, let her also mark one corner — 
the Southern corner of the picture — with the blackest colors, for our 
warning and contempt ; a spot foul with treachery, cowardice, and 
every infamy, from its first birth into the nation, and growing fouUer and 
3 



22 DISUNION CONVENTION. 

more infamous with every succeeding development, till its corruption 
and deformity cover and disgrace the whole scroll. 

I pass the consideration of the share the South sustains in supporting 
the expenses of government in time of peace, for it is like the pauper's 
share in supporting your town and county expenses. The South is the 
great pauper-house of the nation; I wish it were not worse — honest 
poverty is no disgrace. But the infamy of the South cannot be de- 
scribed in decent terms; it is a sink of every ignoble vice and loath- 
some pollution. 

There are no reasons of profit or honor in favor of continued connec- 
tion with the South, but abundant reasons for separation. Self-respect 
and self-preservation equally demand it. We are paying dearly every 
day, in actual cash, for an alliance which no money should hire us to 
sustain. We are investing money in a partnership of bankruptcy, as 
though it were a nice " business operation," and are purchasing dis- 
grace and infamy as if they were the choicest luxuries. We, the most 
industrious and enterprising people of the world, who despise idleness 
and incapacity as a crime, are squandering our money to support and 
encourage a horde of loafers and swindlers. We, the most just and 
liberty-loving people in the world, are lending our strength to an institu- 
tion of the most matchless tyranny the world ever saw, where unlimited 
power over an innocent people is held and exercised, in every variety 
and wantonness of cruelty, by the most degraded and brutal race of 
petty despots whom long continuance in unpunished crime ever bred. 
We, belonging to the bravest race in the world, whose fathers threw 
off the yoke of the most formidable kingdom in the world, while South- 
ern poltroons were skulking in those dismal swamps, and parleying for 
surrender, are now submitting to the yoke and cowering beneath the bra- 
vado of that very province of poltroons, so contemptible as allies. We, 
a people of noble impulses, of generous sympathies, of magnanimous 
memories and aspirations, degrade ourselves to be the bloodhounds to 
chase flying fugitives, chain them, and give them back to the slave- 
driver's lash. We have suffered our noble and well-instructed young* 
men, who went forth to found anew the free institutions of our fathers, 
to be " crushed out " on the fields of Kansas. We have suffered our 
baser and ill-instructed young men to carry into execution the fiUibustcr- 
ing plans of the South, and extend the empire of the lash. Our money, 
our prosperity, our good name, our noble instincts of humanity and man- 
hood, our morality, our religion, all that should be dear to us, are squan- 
dered, corrupted, prostituted, to that base, grovelling institution of a 



SPEECH OF DR. DANIEL MANN. 23 

base, grovelling people. Such are the fruits of our connection. Let it 
be severed ! Let all who love the institutions which our forefathers 
lived, and toiled, and fought, and died to establish — let all who love the 
higher law which ruled them, and reverence the God who guidqd and 
blessed them — unhe to maintain that law, and honor their God. Let us 
cut loose from this Union, which is but a conspiracy of wickedness, and 
rescue our race from its curse, while yet there is any power and any 
virtue left to us. 

Daily the enemy is gathering strength, and we are losing it. Daily 
the corruption spreads. Our rich men, merchants, and large manufac- 
turers, bribed by the facility with which their cunning coins money out 
of the very poverty and recklessness of the South, (money which, in 
the end, is sure to be legislated and swindled from the pockets of the 
farmers and merchants of the Free States,) act as the agents and pan- 
ders of the South. They siijjport and control the policy of the public 
press, leading it to cheat the public and undermine their principles. 
They control the pulpit, stifling the voice of true religion, and teaching 
how to evade or trample on God's higher law — putting into the richest 
pulpits South-side parsons, and such as would setid their mothers into 
slavery, and setting the Stuarts and the Lords over our highest insti- 
tutions of learning, to poison the principles of the pupils. 

When the men of New England take their interests into their own 
hands, those agents of corruption will no longer be tolerated here — at 
least, they will not be permitted to practice their vile arts. As our fath- 
ers did with the tories, so will the people do with them — silence or exjjcl 
them. The spies and tools of the Slave Power are the only dangerous 
enemies of the State. It is only by their influence that we are deluded 
at home, divided in Congress, and defeated in Kansas. It is by their 
private aid and encouragement that a Southern coward and assassin, 
surrounded by fellow-conspirators and assassins, dares to skulk into your 
Senator's presence when alone, unguarded and unsuspecting, and pros- 
trate him with a murderous weapon. It was only by their paralyzing 
and corrupting influence, that every Senator and Representative from the 
Free States did not combine and inflict summary chastisement and per- 
petual warning upon that band of assassins. 

There is no depth of disgrace to which these minions of Slavery 
would not humble the honor of the Free States. While the assassin 
Brooks, was caressed, feted, rewarded, and unanimously reelected, in 
sanction of his assassin act, BtrRLiNGAME, who, though standing on the 
slippery ground of a divided constituency, and sure to be stabbed from 



24 DISUNION CONVENTION. 

behind by those who should have supported him, dared to expose and 
demonstrate the cowardice of the Southern assassin, was made the 
object of the bitterest obloquy by the Northern tools of Slavery. The 
Presidents, Directors, Cashiers and Companies of State street, ranged 
side by side with the officials of the Custom House, from the Col- 
lector down to the tide-waiters and lumpers, and reinforced by every 
bloodhound commissioner, with his marshals and policemen, and lead- 
incf the spew and spawn of the tippling-shops and dance-cellars of Ann 
street, rallied their shameless ranks to the polls to defeat the representa- 
tive of Northern manhood, and elect (as they nearly did) the represen- 
tative of Northern degradation, in the person of Appleton, who laid 
down as his platform, that Northern representatives should so represent 
the North " as to otfend nobody." Poor fool that he was, not to know 
that the very perfection of his sycophancy would be sure to provoke 
offence in the slaveholders themselves, as Randolph's lesson to Everett, 
and Clay's lesson to Choate, might have taught him. 

In separation is our only redress and our only safety. In the Union, 
we cannot right our cause. Our very strength is turned against us. 
Our wealth fills the treasury of the nation, and is controlled by the Slave 
Power. The emissaries of Slavery harbor and fatten in our midst. 
Our few faithful men, whom we send to Congress, must speak our sen- 
timents with bated breath, and with much dilution and disclaimer, for 
they stand in the shadow of the bludgeon ready to fall upon their heads, 
and they know there is no redress. Already, the Southern slaveholder 
may fulfil his threat, and count his slaves from the summit of Bunker 
Hill ; ay, and in that vicinity, they almost outnumber the free men. 

In this heart of the Commonwealth, the altar-fires of Liberty must be 
rekindled, and its beacon flames sent forth to rouse the land. This, I 
have fahh to believe, can be done. I have watched the pulse of the 
common people (the " mechanics and small-fisted farmers," of whom I 
am one,) and I know that it beuts for freedom. In the late campaign, 
the speakers whom the masses heard most gladly, were those who most 
• nearly proclaimed the principles vvliich we meet to-day to inaugurate. 
The days when Mr. Garrison and Mr. Phillips would be hissed by ^ 
New England audience have long passed. Even the printsellers, who 
gauge the popular current on a golden metre, have found that out, and 
they write " Champions of Liberty" over heads once denounced as 
those of " hair-brained fanatics," and expect a harvest of dollars from 
the operation, — and are not disappointed. They have ceased to garnish 
the tombs of the old prophets, for the new ones have, at length, aroused 



SPEECH OF REV. T. W. HIGGINSON. 25 

the public ear. We are on the eve of a new revolution, which shall 
repeat the trium[)hs, but show the mistakes of the old ; of a new confed- 
eration, which shall not only declare the self-evident truths of humanity, 
but abide by them and establish them, unterrified by menace, unbribed 
by flattery, undebased by compromises. 



SPEECH OF EEV. T. W. HIGGINSO]Sr. 

Ladies and Gentlemen : 

I heard almost every word that was spoken in this hall this morning 
with pleasure, until Mr. Garrison stood here to thank any body for com- 
ing to this platform, or to say to any body that it should be recognized 
and honored as an act of courage. Mr. President, if such tributes are 
to be paid, I beg leave, once for all, to renounce my share of them. It 
is honor enough to stand upon this platform at all, to speak for the cause 
we advocate to-day ; and if there really were dangers around us, it would 
be a thing to be still more grateful for. I desire to have it distinctly 
understood, for one, that I endorse the brave words of Oliver Johnson : 
" The cause owes me nothing, but I owe every thing to the cause." 
When I think of all that I have been able to learn from colleges and 
professors and tutors, and compare it with what the radical Abolitionists 
have tausht me. the first seems too light a thing to weigh in the balance 
at all. These men whom you deride, friends, as fanatics and as fools, 
do you know that these men are the educators of you and your children } 
and do you know that the time will come when Worcester will look 
back upon this Disunion Convention as the proudest spot in her history 
since the tiight when Geoi{ge Thompson, driven out of the first Cradle 
of Liberty in Boston, came to this second Cradle of Liberty, here in 
City Hall, and made it rock as it never rocked before ? (Applause.) 

We have come here to-day, Mr. President, with very different views 
on the subject we meet to discuss — with various antecedents, and va- 
rious habits of mind. Some of us are men who have not voted for 
years; others, men who have never failed to vote when they had a 
chance, and only regretted that the chances were not more frequent ; 
some have come, like Mr. Garrison, believing the Constitution to be pro- 
slavery from beginning to end ; others, like yourself, sir, (Dr. Mann,) 
believing it to be as thoroughly anti-slavery ; and yet others, like myself, 
believing it to be both of these things, and some things more, — being 
indeed, as to slavery, what Mr. Bird believes the Philadelphia platform 
was meant to be, for he says of that, as Talleyrand said of the French j 



26 ■ DISUNION CONVENTION. 

Constitution : — "It means nothing, and can mean nothing, for I made 
it myself, on purpose." (Laughter.) Sir, there is no common creed 
among us who stand here to-day, except on the subject of anti-slavery, 
to which we rejoice to have devoted our hearts and lives, and which we 
follow into disunion, because it leads us there, to-day. No one of us 
can enumerate all the causes that, gradually working on our minds, have 
brought us to this clear vision at last, which shows us the nation's dan- 
ger and the nation's salvation. But I know myself, that when 1 took 
part in issuing that call, I did not appreciate, as I now do, the import- 
ance of the movement. I did not know how near the people of Massa- 
chusetts are to disunion. I did not know until I heard the weak reason- 
ings by which they try to shelter themselves against it ; — I did not know 
until then how thin the soil was growing beneath our feet, and how soon 
those of us who thought ourselves safest would be likely to break 
through the crust, and go crumbling into disunion, with our friend here, 
the senior editor of the Spy^ at the head. (Laughter and applause.) 

Mr. Chairman, if I had felt careless or heedless upon this matter — if 
I had distrusted the instinct — if I had doubted the policy — if I had 
ignored the facts, that drive us to this position, they would all have been 
driven back into my soul, revived there for ever, by one hour that I 
spent, last week, in the Athenocum Hall, in Boston, with the wreck of 
what was once Charles Sumnek. When I stood before that noble form, 
once so strong and stately, now, even after months of convalescence, so 
weak and tottering, — when I heard the heroic tones of that unchanged 
voice, and saw the lightning from those unblenching eyes, but remem- 
bered that there might never again be physical force enough for those 
superb powers to clothe themselves in their native eloquence, — when I 
saw what Charles Sumner was longing to be, and what he was, O, 
then that stately form became an altar for me — an altar with live coals 
from heaven upon it, on which I could pledge myself, once and forever- 
more, to an eternal war against slavery. (Loud applause.) 

Mr. President, there are many weaknesses to which the best of us 
are subject, and one is, that of i)elieving that men will say after election 
what they said before. I do not indulge that weakness very freely now ; 
but when I think of the confessions made by the Republican party three 
months ago, and the positions of the men who now lead the statesmanship 
of the Free States, why, I say there is nothing more necessary for our dis- 
union arguments, than to take the scattered sentences of these men, and 
put them one by one together. The whole argument lies in a nut-shell. 
Again and again has it been stated by Republican orators and presses, 



SPEECH OF REV. T. W. HIGGINSON. 27 

that " the time might come " when disunion would indeed be necessary. 
Again and again has the picture been drawn of possible horrors and 
evils yet to be endured, the end of which might be this, Mr. Banks 
immortalized himself, if he is destined to immortality at all, by that one 
sentence, in which he offered, " in a certain contingency, to let the Union 
slide." Well, all we have come here to-day for is, to see whether the 
time has not come to let the contingency slide. (Applause.) 

Has it come? The contingency was this: — "When all political 
efforts fail — when the North loses its power, when the government is 
delivered over, bound hand and foot, to the slaveholders — then at last 
comes the period of disunion." How is it now? Take the confessions 
of these very men — their statements, public and private, their explana- 
tions, their predictions — and we have all we need for the other pre- 
mise of our argument. Again and again did the same Republican 
presses and orators volunteer the confession, in the words of the New 
York Times, that the election of Fremont was " the last hope of free- 
dom." These, you say, perhaps, were public statements, and, after 
election, of course, we admit that our orators, like the other orators, may 
sometimes have spoken for effect. Did the same men speak only for 
effect, when, in private consultation with personal and political friends, 
they made the same admissions ? Every gentleman of the Republican 
party here has heard it admitted in conversation among Republicans, 
before election, that, in case of defeat this time, it would be scarcely 
possible for the party to rally successfully again. Henry Wilson him- 
self told me that, in Washington street, in the city of Boston, a year ago 
this last summer. I have heard from high authority, that a few weeks 
before the election, Mr. Banks said to his friends : " This election de- 
cides the politics of the country for the next thirty years." And yet 
you talk about the Republican party rallying in 1860 ! Do you know 
more about it than Henry Wilson ? Are you better judges of statistics 
than Mr. Speaker Banks ? If you say those men have been wrong 
before, and may be wrong now, ask yourselves if they have ever under- 
rated the strength of the party to which they belong. 

More than this : are you not aware, those of you who profess to 
know all about the pulling of the wires, that the recent condition of the 
parties at the Presidential election, instead of being any thing strange, 
unexpected, contrary to all the dreams of the Democratic party and of 
the South, baffling all their calculations and frightening their wits out of 
them ; — instead of this, was a thing expected, predicted, calculated 
upon by the Democratic party, four years ago ? If you do not know it, 



28 DISUNION CONVENTION. 

I do. If there is a Democrat who is not aware of the fact, lot me tell 
him that his leaders are shrewder men than their Republican compatriots 
give them credit for being. About the time of the election of General 
Pierce, I happened to be in conversation with a gentleman who is now a 
Senator of the United States. He had just come from a Conversation 
with leading Democratic politicians, the chosen advisers of President 
Pierce, who had met together in New Hampshire, to map out the future 
policy of the administration. And what was that policy h To identify 
the Democratic party with the South, and take the consequences. " It 
is the only source of political power," these men reasoned, and they 
reasoned from experience. " We must have the South on our side ; 
if we have that, we can risk every thing." "We may lose the North," 
somebody suggested. " Very likely we shall lose it," was the answer. 
" We may lose every Northern State," was the remarkable statement 
that impressed itself upon my memory ; " no matter! if we have got 
the South, we have got the real power, and can always command votes 
enough to keep it ; and the Northern States will either have to come 
sneaking back to us, or else they will have to dissolve the Union." That 
is what leading Democratic politicians said four years ago; and you 
fancy that the men whose foresigli-t predicted that, are baffled and intim- 
idated because their predictions have become true ! 

We have got to go deeper and deeper yet, before we get hold of the 
principle that rules the statesmanship of America. 

Mr. Chairman, I do not care how small the beginnings, or how trifling 
the aspect of a movement. We have lived to see a movement that be- 
gan in an obscure corner, gradually rising until it fills the whole horizon; 
and are we to be disturbed by a few timid doubters or a few flippant 
criticisms now ? Why, there stood here just now a man who stood 
alone in the Union twenty-five years ago; and now fourteen hundred 
thousand voters, in solemn act, record their endorsement of the position 
of Wm. Lloyd Garrison in 1830. (Applause.) We, fellow-citizens of 
Worcester, of all others, should know what small beginnings lead to 
magnificent conclusions ; for all of us can remember the time when the 
whole Free Soil party of Massachusetts could have been brought into 
'this hall, and a careless observer would have passed by the door, and 
thought there was nobody inside. All the strength of an action depends 
upon the right which lies bcliind it. You cannot convince mo that 1 am 
in the least danger in the i)osition that I take, no matter if 1 am the 
weakest of mankind, and stand alone, so long as truth be on my side : 
let truth be against me, and though 1 have the world to back me, I aia 



SPEECH OF REV. T. W. HIGGINSON. 29 

powerless. We all talk of believing this, but there is not one in a thou- 
sand who believes it for one hour out of the twenty-four. Mr. May has 
told us of that convention which talked so bravely in this hall, twelve 
years ago, about dissolving the Union. I have seen old Faneuil Hall 
echo, years ago, in response to sentiments as revolutionary as those we 
have uttered to-day. The difference between us is, then those senti- 
ments did not mean any thing ; now they do. Why was it, that that 
band of energetic and intellectual men, meeting here, and threatening so 
bravely, effected nothing ? Every one of them drew a glittering blade, 
and waved it until the whole air seemed to flash with enthusiastic resolu- 
tion. Why didn't it come to something? Simply because every man 
of them had a neat little scabbard by his side, and when he had done 
waving his blade for popular effect, he tucked it back again, and there 
it has rested ever since. You know what a stir was made when Charles 
Allen, in 1848, undertook to take his out and air it a little ; the others 
seemed to have all rusted in. But give me a convention of ten men 
who have drawn the sword for the right, and thrown aioay the scablard^ 
and I will revolutionize the world. (Loud applause.) 

You say, we are " traitors," " fanatics." That is what we came here 
to be. That is a clear compliment. You say we are " weak," " pow- 
erless." Are we? Give us five years, and let us see. You say, 
" O, they come together, and try to get up a great flame ; but some 
are old flints, that won't strike fire, and some are young steel, that 
won't give out sparks ; the tinder is a little damp, and if we only 
throw a little more water upon it, they won't get any fire." Well, 
the steel may be bad, and the flint useless, perhaps ; all we ask is, 
Open the doors of your powder magazine, and let us try ! Will you 
do it ? 

I tell you, friends and fellow-citizens, that there are men on this 
platform to whom these thoughts, that are new to many of us to-day, 
have been the deliberate purpose of years; and there are other men 
here, who have embraced them so earnestly, that in their hearts the 
work of years has been done in a day. How many years is it since, 
in the city of Boston, the action of half a dozen men lined the streets 
with bayonets • from Court Square to Long Wharf, and brought the 
country to the very verge of civil war.? Unprepared, unpremeditated, 
unpracticed, half a dozen men did that ; and there has not been a 
fugitive slave case in Boston since. Give us another one, another 
chance to come face to face with the United States government, on 
such an occasion as that, and see if we have not learned something, 
by the failure. (Applause.) 



30 DISUNION CONVENTION. 

Mr. Chairman, the difficulty that I find in our operations thus far is, 
that all the talk in the newspapers, and all the bluster at Washington 
and out of it, dies away before we have a chance to learn whether it 
means any thing. Talk of treason ! Why, I have been trying for ten 
years to get the opportunity to commit treason, and have not found it 
yet. What brings us here to-day is the hope that, by the blessing of 
Providence, as things are getting further on, somewhere or other, here 
or at Boston, in Kansas or at Washington, there may be an opening by 
which we may come face to face with this Slave Power, which calls itself 
a government, and see if its threats mean any thing. 

The reason why the newspapers do not respect this movement is, 
that they have got out of the habit of respecting any movement. They 
know their politics don't mean any thing ; they suspect other men mean 
no more. They know they wage war only on paper ; they do not know 
that these men, non-resistants though some of them are, are waging a 
war that may cost men's lives. It is an easy thing to fight in news- 
papers — to go abroad in the streets armed only with a corrected proof 
sheet — (and we have lately had some proof here in Worcester that 
needed a great deal of correcting ;) but when a man is in the posi- 
tion of that Portuguese soldier at the battle of Goa, bearing a barrel 
of gunpowder in his arms, and a lighted torch in his teeth^ and cry- 
ing out at the same time, " Make way ! make way ! I carry with me 
the lives of a thousand men" ; — when men, like Garrison and Phillips, 
are engaged in such a duty, do you suppose they will be frightened 
when Henry Wilson sends on from Washington, post-haste, and says 
they had better keep still, they will damage the anti-slavery cause ? 
(Applause.) 

No, sir! disunion is not a desire, merely; it is a destiny. It is in 
vain to talk of difficulties in effecting the process. The laws of human 
nature are taking care of those difficulties very rapidly. If our cal- 
culations are correct, it will be easier to hasten than to postpone it. 
The geographical line of division, about which some of our corre- 
spondents are so anxious, will determine itself as^ soon as we are 
ready for it. We used to call Southern Iowa the darkest spot in the 
Free States. Last summer, I went along the borders of that State, 
and laid my hand upon the earth ; and every where the soil was hot 
and hotter with the suppressed volcano. I tell you, let another war 
come in Kansas, and no power on earth can prevent a border war 
between Missouri and Iowa. The line will be drawn for us soon 
enough by the passions of men. The calm deliberations of conven- 



SPEECH OF W. L. GARRISON. 31 

tions like these, only prepare the way for it. If we cannot bring it 
about peaceably, it will come forcibly, that is all. The great forces 
of nature are sufficient. The vast antagonistic powers are brought into 
collision — the earthquake comes — and all we disunionists say is, if it 
is coming, in God's name, let it come quickly ! (Applause.) 

SPEECH OF "WM. LLOYD GARRISON. 

Mr. President : 

It was my intention to have prepared, with some care and delibera- 
tion, the views'I desired to express on this grave occasion ; but having 
been ill for the last two weeks, I have not been able to give a moment 
to the preparation of a set speech. It is true, sir, with me, the subject 
is familiar; nevertheless, this is no ordinary gathering, and nothing 
should be hastily uttered on a question so vast, so solemn, and so revo- 
lutionary. 

Sir, I do not marvel at the general hesitancy which I find in the com- 
munity to come up to the high position of demanding a dissolution of 
the Union. I remember how men are born, and how they are bred. 
I know, in regard to my own case, with what tenacity I clung to this 
Union, inspired by the patriotic feelings of my early days, and never 
dreaming that any thing would ever separate me from it, or lead me to 
desire its dissolution. Men do not change the institutions which have 
come down to them from the past lightly, or for transient reasons. 
They must be- placed in a trying emergency, — they must feel a strong 
moral obligation pressing upon them, — they must clearly perceive 
some great impending evil to be shunned, some great good to be 
gained, — before they will go into revolution ; whether it be a physical 
revolution, attended with the shedding of human blood, or a moral 
revolution, attended with the loss of friends and popularity, and the 
sacrifice of worldly interests. If the great mass of the people were 
ready to respond, at once, in favor of the dissolution of the Union, 
with no more light on the subject than they now enjoy, I would give 
little or nothing for the response, because I should be certain it was 
the mere impulse of the moment ; but when they hesitate, and hold 
back, and forbear to the last, trusting that there may be some way of 
escape ; when they beg for a little longer time to look at a question 
involving such momentous consequences, before openly committing 
themselves, I say, "Well, that is all right and proper — it is human 
nature." When such men move, it is with the force of the thundor» 



32 DISUNION CONVENTION. 

bolt ; they are as reliable as the everlasting hills. If, therefore, Dis- 
union be a matter of slow growth — as it is — I am sure it is a true 
growth, and that every thing is gained thereby. I expect it will go 
on, slowly gathering to itself friends and advocates, until at last it shall 
culminate in an all-pervading Northern sentiment, and the great work 
be easily accomplished. Our revolutionary fathers hesitated long before 
they threw oiT the yoke of the mother country. How many years 
did they hope, and pray, and struggle, for redress of their wrongs, 
trusting to the justice of England — that Parliament would give heed 
to their petitions — and that they might be spared the necessity of 
raising the banner of independence — all the while avo*ving their loy- 
alty to the British throne ! Yet the hour came when, in spite of their 
veneration for the past, in spite of their feebleness in regard to num- 
bers and resources, and in spite of the colossal power of Great Britain, 
they said, " We will submit no longer ! The time, has come for us to 
throw off the yoke, and declare ourselves free and independent." 
The men who, after that time, through cowardice or selfishness, sided 
with the mother country, were justly branded as Tories. Sir, thg race 
of Tories did not die off with the Revolutionary struggle. In our day, 
we are passing through the same ordeal. We are engaged in a rev- 
olution more far-reaching,more sublime, more glorious, than our fathers 
ever dreamed of. I know that there are honest men yet struggling 
with conscientious doubts, who sincerely ask, " Has the time for sep- 
aration come ? May we not be pardoned, if we wait a little longer ? 
Is there not some turn of the wheel whereby Freedom will come 
uppermost, and Slavery go down " > Such men are to be respected, 
for they are not animated by a craven spirit. In due time, they will 
assuredly be with us. But there are others who are not honest ; who 
are actuated by the old tory spirit which was so hostile to the struggle 
for colonial independetice ; and these are to be branded as the enemies 
of mankind. 

Mr. President, who is it that will be with us in this great movement 
for a separation of the North from the South > Let me first tell you 
who will not be with us ; and I think you will agree with me, that the 
loss of their company is no cause of shame or regret. They are not of 
us, nor with us, but against us, to a man ; in their very enmity, wit- 
nesses before God, that our position is one of virtue, of honor, of true 
humanity, of impartial liberty. The pensioned tools of a pro-slavery 
Government — puppets who are moved and controlled by "the hand 
that feeds them " — Northern hunkers and demagogues, who are using 



SPEECH OF W. L. GARKISON. 83 

their influence to suppress all anti-slavery agitation — mercenary traders, 
whose god is the " almighty dollar " — wily poUticians, who will sacri- 
fice every thing to their unhallowed lust of oflice — clerical time-ser- 
vers, whose only gospel is public sentiment, — these will all join in the 
cry of " treason," " fanaticism," and " infidelity," and combine their 
forces to put down a movement that never can be put down — never! 
never ! — because it is impossible to put down God, and of this move- 
ment He is the life. (Applause.) Finally, sir, we shall not have the 
rabble with us ! The brutal, the vile, the profane, the mobocratic, in- 
stinctively shrink from us, and array themselves on the side of the 
Union-savers, They do not rally under our banner. 

Who will go for a dissolution of this blood-stained Union ? Those 
whose reverence for God is greater than all human institutions; who 
only ask what is His will, what is His law, and never ask any thing be- 
yond it. I believe that such must and will be for annulling that " cove- 
nant with death and agreement with hell," the Constitution of the United 
States. All who mean to be true to the cause of liberty will be with. us. 
If they do not yet understand this question, they will soon see that there 
is no other way of escape, and will join our ranks. What if we are now 
derided because we are so few ? The soiil, faithful to principle, never 
yet took counsel of numbers. He is a dastard, who contemptuously 
points his finger at a feeble minority struggling for the right, and ex- 
claims, "You have nobody with you!" Sir, 1 desire to be on the. strong 
side ; but I know that the wrong side is never the strong side. I know 
that strength lies in eternal rectitude. The triumph of a righteous cause 
is only a question of time. That cause is ours, and it shall one day be 
gloriously victorious. 

Who will rally for Disunion ? Those who " remember them that are 
in bonds as bound with them" ; who look at the issue, not by their pleas- 
ant firesides, not as an abstract proposition, but on the Southern auction- 
block and plantation, from the stand-point of the wretched slave, for 
whose protection there is neither law nor government in any part of our 
country. 

I wish to say a word respecting the letter which has been read to this 
Convention from Henry Wilson. I believe he desires to aid the Anti- 
Slavery movement as far as he can, and at the same time advance his 
own political ends. The course he is pursuing at Washington forces 
upon me the conviction, that he is on the retreat. His letter is deroga- 
tory to himself, as a professed friend of freedom, to the spirit of the old 
Puritans and of our revolutionary sires — (applause) — not because it 



34 DIStJNION CONVENTION. 

does not endorse the Disunion movement, but on account of its pervading 
tone and spirit — its affectation of superior patriotism — its ridiculous 
o-lorification of a Union which has only served to extend and strengthen 
slavery, and to weaken and degrade liberty — its msulting advice to 
those who are here assembled — and its empty flourish about " Liberty 
and Union," as though these can exist in a government constituted like 
ours ! It is a letter which the people of Massachusetts should tie like a 
millstone around his neck, to sink him in the sea of political oblivion, 
until he shall have recovered his manhood. 

Mr. President, after that tragedy took place in the Senate of the 
United States, when Charles Sumner was struck down by the rufRaa 
hands of Preston S. Brooks, one of the Richmond journals made the 
following comments : — 

" These vulgar abolitionists in the Senate are getting above themselves. They 
have been humored until thej- forget their position. They have grown saucy, 
and dare to be impudent to gentlemen. Now, they are a low, mean, scui'vy 
set, with some little book learning, but as utterly devoid of spurit and honor as 
A PACK OF CUKS. 

" The truth is, that they have been suffered to run too long without collars. 
THEY MUST BE LASHED INTO SUBMISSION. Sumner, in particular, 
ought to have nine-and-thirty early every morning. He is a great strapping 
fellow, and could stand the cowhide beautifully. Brooks frightened him, and at 
the first blow of the cane, he bellowed like a bull-calf. / 

" There is the blackguard Wilson, an ignorant Natick cobbler, swaggering in 
excess of muscle, and absolutely dying for a beating. Will not somebody take 
him in hand? Hale is another huge, red-faced, sweatmg scoundrel, whom 
some o-entleman should kick and cutf until he abates somethmg of his impudent 

" Southern gentlemen must protect their own honor and feelings. It is an 
idle mockery to challenge one of these sculUons. It is equally useless to attempt 
to disf^race them. They are insensible to shame, and can be brought to reason 
only by an application of cowhide or gutta perclia. Let them once understand 
that for evcrv vile word spoken against the South, THEY WILL SUFFEll SO 
MANY STlilFES, and they will soon learn to behav(f themselves like DECENT 
DOGS — they can never be gentlemen." 

Judging from his disclaimers and protests in the Senate, and the tone 
of his letter before us, it would almost seem as if Henry Wilson were 
learnim^ to behave — I will not say like a " decent dog," but very sub- 
missively in the presence of his Southern overseers. 

Sir, there are those who effect to regard this as a very contemptible 
movement. It is -so, according to " the wisdom of this world ; " but it is 
not contemptible as to its object, or the spirit which animates it, or the 
principle by which it is guided. It is no more contemptible than was 
the advent of Jesus, or the conflict of Luther with the Romish Church, 
or the struggle of our fathers to throw off the British yoke. How, in 
all a^es, have mankind been quickened, and aided onward in the right ? 



SPEECH OF W. L. GARRISON. 35 

Not by numbers, but by the simple truth — espoused not by the rich 
and powerful, but enunciated and enforced by a solitary witness here 
and there, and gradually obtaining mastery over all dpposition. I 
am sure that we have the truth with us, and, therefore, that power 
which moves the world is committed to our trust — let those scoff who 
will. 

Reference has been made to a petition which was sent to Congress, a 
few years since, from the town of Haverhill, in this State, and presented 
by John Quincy Adams, asking that body to take measures for a peace- 
ful dissolution of the Union. How many names were appended to it ? 
Thirty ! Yet, though it was a solitary petition, signed by only thirty 
obscure individuals, into what convulsions were both houses of Congress 
thrown, and what terror and rage pervaded the whole Southern portion 
of the Confederacy, in consequence of its presentation ! And why was 
this ? Simply because it was like the hand-writing which Belshazzar 
saw upon the wall of his palace — " Weighed in the balance and 
FOUND WANTING." To the slaveholders, it was as the voice of God, 
saying, " Your covenant with death shall be annulled " — and well 
might they tremble ! 

The air is filled with objections to a movement of this kind. I am 
neither surprised nor disquieted at this. One of these is of a very sin- 
gular nature, and it is gravely urged as conclusive against Disunion. It 
is to this effect : we must remain in the Union, because it would be in- 
human in us to turn our backs upon the millions of slaves in the South- 
ern States, and leave them to their fate ! Men who have never been 
heard of in the Anti-Slavery ranks, or who are ever submitting to a 
compromise of principle, have their bowels wonderfully moved all at 
once with sympathy for the suffering slave ! Even our esteemed friend 
Theodore Parker, (who deals in no cant,) says in his letter, that he 
cannot consent to cut himself off from the slave population. Now, we 
who are engaged in this movement claim to be equally concerned for 
the liberation of the slave. If we have not yet proved our willingness 
to suffer the loss of all things, rather than to turn and flee, God knows that 
we are prepared to bear any new cross that He, in his providence, may 
be disposed to lay upon us. For one, I make no parade of my anxiety 
for the deliverance of those in bondage; but I do say, that it strikes 
me as remarkable that 'those who, for a quarter of a century, have 
borne the heat and burden of the day, should have the imputation cast 
upon them of intending to leave four millions of -slaves in their chains, 
by seeking the overthrow of this Union ! I find, even in the Spy of this 



36 DISUNION CONVENTION. 

city, the same absurdity reiterated. After referring to this Convention 
in very respectful terms, it says : — 

" We are as sensible, we believe, as they are, of the wrongs inflicted upon the 
North by the Slave Power. "We beheve that they are such as would afford a full 
justification to us to cut asunder from them, if we could do it consistently with 
our duties and obligations to others. But there is a large slave i^opulation in the 
South, and a still larger, nominally free, non-slaveholding jjopulation, whose 
"nTongs are as mountains to mole-hills, compared with ours. They have become 
politically connected with us, and on the continuance of that connection rests 
the only hope of their deliverance, for a long period to come. It would, m our 
estimation, be unchristian and unmanly — it would bo selfish and cou-ardhj, in us, 
to forsake them in the time of their great need, and leave them to their cruel 
fate, for the sake of relieving ourselves from the comparatively small evils which 
we suffer in consequence of the connection." 

Now, all I have to say is, that this is a man of straw ! I have no idea 
of forsaking the slave, under any circumstances. The slaveholder 
knows it, and the country knows it ; and I am sure that those who are 
associated in this movement intend to continue the conflict till every 
yoke is broken. I declare that this talk of leaving the slave to his fate 
is not a true representation of the case ; and it indicates a strange dull- 
ness of comprehension with regard to our position and purpose. What! 
is it to forsake the slave when I cease to be the aider and abettor of his 
master ? (Cheers.) What ! when the North is pressing down upon 
four millions of slaves, like an avalanche, and we say to her, " Take oiF 
that pressure — stand aside — give the slave a chance to regain his feet, 
and assert his freedom ! " is that turning our backs upon him .? (Ap- 
plause.) Here, for example, is a man engaged in highway robbery, 
and another man is acting as an accessory, without whose aid the robber 
cannot succeed. In saying to the accomplice, " Hands ofT! don't aid 
the villain ! " shall I be told that tiiis is enabling the liighwayman to rob 
with impunity .'' What an absurdity ! Are we not trying to save the 
pockets of all travellers from being picked, in seeking to break up all 
connection with highway robbery ? (Applause.) 

Now, sir, we go for Disunion, because, while the Union continues, 
there is no hope for the slave; because, with this Union, it is possible to 
hold four millions of bondmen in chains, and impossible without it; be- 
cause the whole country is pledged to guard and defend slavery where 
it now exists. Massachusetts is virtually a slave State to-day, by the 
compromises of the Constitution ; therefore it*is that every fugitive slave, 
touching her soil, must be secreted or flee. Plymouth Rock has crum- 
bled into dust; it can afford iiim no protection. Bunker Hill and Fa- 
neuil Hall are equally impotent. We have been told, to-day, that no 



SPEECH OF W. L. GARRISON. 37 

fugitive has been arrested in Boston since the seizure of Anthony Burns. 
Why not ? Because we have been afraid to have another case come 
up, and every fugitive who comes to Boston is counselled to make his 
way to Canada. 

Mr. HiGGiNSON — When a fugitive comes to Worcester, we always 
advise him to stay. (Applause.) 

Mr. Garrison — It remains to be seen whether Worcester will be able 
to protect the slave, when seized by the United States Government ; 
and when that time shall come, it will be Worcester out of the Union, 
not Worcester in the Union, that will break his fetters. But the Spy 
says, we have power to relieve both ourselves and the slave, under the 
Constitution. I will thank any man to show me how and when this can 
be done. I believe the reverse of this to be the exact truth. 

For one, I am here to say, that I am for no union with slaveholders. 
No union with them in the Church, none in the State, but an eternal 
divorce from them, while they remain slaveholders. 

What is the American Union ? Has it form and substance, or is it 
something which belongs to the imagination — a mere piece of dough, 
which every man may mould and fashion as he thinks proper, with- 
out regard to its original design or positive provisions ? Men talk 
of interpreting the Constitution as they understand it. Does it never 
occur to them that this is a game at which two can play ? If they 
may interpret it ad libitum, so may the slaveholders. Now, sir, I assume 
that we have such a thing as the American Union ; that it has height 
and breadth and exact dimensions ; that the nation understands what it 
is, and has been from its origin, in regard to its slaveholding conditions. 
Now let us see who are for its perpetuity. I turn to the Southern slave- 
holders, and ask, " Are you for a dissolution of the Union ? " and they 
are for hanging me up by the neck for raising the question ! (Laugh- 
ter.) True, they threaten, in case certain things shall be done, that 
they will separate from us ; but, mark you ! they are in favor of per- 
petuating " the Union as it is," and as our fathers made it. I turn to all 
that remains of the Whig party, and ask, "Are you in favor of preserv- 
ing the Union ? " and they exclaim, " Yes, to the end of time ! " I turn 
to the Democratic party, and ask, " Are you in favor of preserving the 
Union ? " and they reply, " Accursed be he who is not ! " I turn to 
the American party, and ask, "Are you for this 'glorious' Union?" 
" Yes, until the crack of doom." Finally, I turn to the Republican 
party, and say, " And you, also, go for the Union ? " And they make 
the loudest noise, and throw up their caps the highest, in its behalf. 
4 



38 DISUNION CONVENTION. 

Now, either these parties mean by " Union " the same thing, or they 
do not. Henry Wilson, when he says, " I am for perpetuating the 
Union," means by it what the South means, or he does not. All these 
parties mean the same thing, or they do not. If they do, then I stain 
them all with the blood of four millions of slaves, who lie crushed and 
bleeding beneath the Union. If they do not, then I say, there is treach- 
ery somewhere ; because they are using the same word, representing 
the old idea of the Union, as understood and carried out by our fathers. 
Who is it that is playing falsely ? 

My reasons for leaving the Union are, first, because of the nature of 
the bond. I would not stand here a moment, were it not that this is 
with me a question of absolute morality — of obedience to the " higher 
law." By all that is just and holy, it is not optional whether you or I 
shall occupy the ground of Disunion. It is not a matter of political ex- 
pediency or policy, or even of incongruity of interests between the North 
and the South. It strikes deeper, it rises higher than that. This is the 
question : — Are we of the North not bound in a Union with slave- 
holders, whereby they are enabled to hold four millions of our country- 
men in bondage, with all safety and impunity ? Is not Massachusetts in 
alliance with South Carolina, Rhode Island with Georgia, Maine with 
Alabama, Vermont with Mississippi, giving the strength of this nation to 
the side of the dealer in human flesh r My difficulty, therefore, is a 
moral one. The Union was formed at the expense of the slave popu- 
lation of the land. I cannot swear to uphold it. As I understand it, 
they who ask me to do so, ask me to do an immoral act — to stain my 
conscience — to sin against God. How can I do this ? I care not what 
consequences may be predicted. It is a sin to " strike hands with thieves, 
and consent with adulterers." 1 aver that the compact made by our 
fathers, in relation to its slaveholding guarantees, is a compact more 
wicked than was ever made since the world began. 

I press it upon the consciences of all who hear me — "You claim to 
be moral, humane. Christian men. Tell me, what is the Constitution of 
the Unhed States, which you swear to uphold ? What is this boasted 
Union, which you are determined to perpetuate? Does it not provide 
that there shall be a Slave Oligarchy in Congress, representing three- 
fifths of the slave population ? Is there not a provision for hunting fugi- 
tive slaves every where through the land ? Is not the entire power of 
the nation pledged to keep the slaves in their chains, by suppressing all 
insurrections ? If these things be so, I ask you, as humane men, as 
Christian men, as anti-slavery men, how, in the name of God, it is pos- 



SPEECH OF W. L. GARRISON. 39 

sible for you to support such " an agreement with hell," for one hour, 
and then wipe your lips and say, " We are guilty of no sin " ? It may 
be that you feed and clothe the fugitive, and help him on his way ; you 
generously contribute to the anti-slavery cause, and actively resist the 
extension of slavery. All this shall be put down to your credit. But do 
you not recollect the case of the young man who came to Jesus, and 
asked what good thing he might do that he might have eternal life ? 
Jesus said, " Thou knowest the commandments. Do not kill, Do not 
steal. Do not bear false witness." " All these have I kept from my 
youth up," was the exulting reply. But Jesus said, " If thou wilt be 
perfect^ go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and then shalt 
thou have treasure in heaven, and come and follow me." And he went 
away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. It Is precisely so here. 
You have performed many commendable deeds ; still, one thing is lack- 
ing : — you have not ceased to strike hands with the enslavers of your 
fellow-men, under the Constitution of the United States. 

Sir, this is a wonderful book that I hold in my hand — [referring tO' 
the Bible.] While I reject the absurd idea of its plenary inspiration, I 
find so much truth in it, so much of the prophetic spirit in it, such burn- 
ing denunciations of oppression in it, that my pulses thrill when I read' 
its solemn warnings and stern rebukes. It seems as if the prophet 
Isaiah must have foreseen the time when the framers of the American 
Constitution came together to form this government ; for how truly has 
he described the spirit of the American people, and the horrible com- 
pact into which they entered at that time ? How applicable are both his 
description and reproof to us as a nation ! — 

<' Wherefore hear the word of the Lord, ye scornful men, that rule this people.. 
Because ye have said, we have made a covenant witli death, and with hell are we 
at agreement ; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not 
come unto us ; for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have 
we hid ourseh^es. Therefore thus saith the Lord God : Judgment also Avill I lay- 
to the line, and righteousness to the plummet ; and the hail shall sweep away 
the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding-place. And your 
covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall 
not stand ; when tlie overflowing scourge shall pass through, then ye shall be 
trodden down by it." 

This describes, in the most graphic manner, the character of the 
American Union, and the language of the people concerning it. They 
make lies their refuge, and imagine themselves safe. But judgment 
shall yet be executed ; and He who sits in the heavens will rend asunder 
the fabric so proudly reared by our fathers, leaving not one stone upon 
another. ' 



40 DISUNION CONVENTION. 

I am opposed to this Union, because it is an insane experiment to 
reconcile those elennents which are eternally hostile. God has never 
made it possible for Liberty and Slavery to live together in partnership. 
Between the North, with her free labor, free press, free schools, free 
institutions — and the South, with her slave labor, and mental darkness, 
and bloody despotism — there can be no union, and there never has 
been one, except in name. We are only palming off a sham before 
the world, when we affect to regard it as something worthy of venera- 
tion and perpetuity. 

Of what value is it to us, as freemen, in the slave States.? "What 
protection does it give.? None whatever. Henry Wilson is not for 
sundering the Union ; yet Henry Wilson has a rope round his neck in 
one half of the Union, as the outspoken advocate of the slave. He 
dare not go South, even to promulgate his Republican doctrines ; for it 
would be at the peril of his life. There is not a man at the South who 
enjoys liberty of conscience, of speech, or of the press, as against sla- 
very. Now tell me why, knowing all this, you still cry out in favor of 
the Union .? Does not the South lay her tyrannous hands upon all the 
colored citizens of Massachusetts who are found upon her soil, thrust 
them into her dungeons, and sell them into eternal slavery if they are 
not ransomed ? As a Massachusetts man, I am for no such Union as 
that — God forbid ! 

Again, I am for the overthrow of the Union, because of the avowed 
determination of the South to extend and perpetuate her accursed slave 
system, ad infinitum. With one voice, she declares that she will never 
yield one jot or tittle in this struggle for emancipation ; that she means 
to go forward, and overthrow every barrier to the diffusion of chattel 
slavery throughout this continent; that she hates all our free institu- 
tions, and hopes to subvert them. I know what is the spirit of the South, 
and I take her at her word, and say, " You have shown that the time 
has come for us to separate. Be it so ! " 

Sir, there is no power in the United States government, or in any 
State government, to give us any protection in the slave States. We 
have a right to go there, and denounce slavery as a curse and a crime ; 
a natural right, which is God-given ; a constitutional right, by the origi- 
nal compact. But if we go there, and attempt to exercise this right, we 
are subjected to every description of personal insult and outrage. We 
may make our appeal for redress to the United States government, or to 
the Slate government, but we shall plead in vain. 

Again, I am for Vhe speedy overthrow of the Union, because, while it 
exists, 1 see no end to the extension of slavery. I see every thing in the 



SPEECH OF W. L. GARRISON. 41 

hands of the Slave Power now. I see the national government for four 
years to come — all the resources of the country — every dollar in the 
treasury — the army, the navy, the judiciary, every thing, in ils grasp; 
and I know that, whh all these means and facilities, and the disposition , 
to use them, nothing can successfully contend against it. 

I am sure of another thing — that when the North shall withdraw from 
the Union, there will be an end to Southern fiUibustering, and schemes 
of annexation. Then the tables will be turned, and we shall have the 
slaveholders at our doors, crying for mercy. Kely upon it, there is not 
an intelligent slaveholder at the South, who is for the dissolution of the 
Union. I do not care what the folly or insanity of the Southern nuUifi- 
ers may be ; I do not care how much they hate the North, and threaten 
to separate from us ; they are contemptible numerically, and only make 
use of these threats to bring the North down on her knees, to do their 
bidding, in order to save the Union. Not one of them is wdling to have 
the cord cut, and the South permitted to try the experiment. If it be 
otherwise, God. grant that she may soon take this step, and see whether 
she will be able to hold a single slave one hour after the deed is done ! 

The dissolution of the Union will paralyze the power of the master, 
and, therefore, render emancipation certain, by a geographical neces- 
sity. The line, — where will it run ? It will run between freedom and 
slavery, wherever that is ; between free labor and slave labor ; between 
where man is owned as a slave, and where men own themselves, and 
have power to take care of themselves, as free laborers. That is where 
the line will run. There will be no Atlantic ocean rolling between ; but 
the slave will be able, at a single stride, to step over the line into a free 
and independent republic, where he will be protected against all pursuit. 
Under such circumstances, no border State can long remain a slave 
State, in the nature of things. 

Yes, the dissolution of the Union will smite slavery to the dust. 
What next will follow? The jubilee having come, we shall be free 
every where ; free at the South, free at the North ; with free labor, 
free schools, a free press in common. With universal freedom, we 
shall then organize a magnificent Union from the Atlantic to the 
Pacific, in which there shall be neither tyrant nor slave, and it shall 
go well with us as a people. (Applause.) 

Dr. Wayland, of Providence, has expressed my views and feelings 
entirely, in a speech which he delivered on the Kansas-Nebraska bill. 
I beg leave to read a single extract : — 

" I value the Union as much as any man. I would cheerfully sacrific-c to it 
every thing but truth, justice and liberty. When I must surrender these, as 



42 DISUNION CONVENTION. 

the price of the Union, the Union becomes at once a thing which I abhor. To 
form a union for the sake of jierpetuating oppression, is to make myself an op- 
pressor. This I cannot be, for I love liberty as much for my neighbor as for my- 
self. To sacrifice my liberty for the sake of the Union, is impossible. God made 
me free, and I cannot be in bondage to any man. * * * The Union, itself, 
becomes to me an accursed thing, if I must first steep it in the tears and blood of 
those for whom Christ died." 

The Union is steeped " in the tears and blood of those for whom 
Christ died," and it is maintained only "at the sacrifice of truth, jus- 
tice and liberty" — therefore I pronounce it " an accursed thing," and 
treat it accordingly. 

Mr. President, this theme is exhaustless. I cannot enter even upon 
the threshold of the argument on this occasion. But I will thank any 
man who will show me how we can rationally hope to restrain the 
Slave Power in any direction, whilst the Union exists, and' the pres- 
ent determination of the South remains to perpetuate slavery at all 
hazards. Until that be done, I shall be an incorrigible Disunionist. I 
tell you, men of the North, as long as you proclaim in the ear of 
the Slave Power that you never mean to yield up this Union, come 
what may of outrage and villany in its train, you thereby surrender 
every thing, — manhood, justice, liberty, reverence for God, — and 
grant an unlimited license for the extension of slavery over this conti- 
nent. For remember this : the Slave Power conquers by intimidation. 
We of the North are without courage — without backbone — and the 
Slave Power has long since found it out. We believe in preserving 
the Union, not in the living God; and this is damnable idolatry; — 
therefore it is that we are ever driven to the wall by our Southern 
masters. 

Men of the North ! you are constantly assuring the Slave Power 
that you will yield up every thing to save the Union. You are infat- 
uated ! Say to the South that there is a point beyond which she can- 
not pass, except at the cost of the Union ; that there is something 
dearer to you than the Union — namely, the preservation of liberty 
for yourselves and your children, and reverence for the eternal law 
of God. Tell her that if she passes beyond that point, she will find 
no Union existing. Nay, wait for no fresh outrage, but declare the 
Union to be now at an end ! If our fathers made it, for the sake of 
sclf-i)roteclion and self-interest, may we not unmake it, for the sake 
of true religion, humanity and freedom? We have tried the experi- 
ment for ajmost three score years, and it has proved a failure. Like 
causes must produce like eHects. The living and the dead must not he 



SPEECH OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 43 

bound together. If we do not separate, the liberties of us all will be 
buried in a common grave, and not even a remnant shall be saved. 
" What concord hath Christ with Belial ? or what fellowship hath light 
with darkness ? or how can two walk together, except they be 
agreed ? " Whoever else may falter, or counsel delay, or take refuge 
in hypocrisy, T go for uncompromising hostility to slavery every 
where, and, therefore, for NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS. 
(Applause.) 

SPEECH OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Mr. President: 

We are assembled to consider the expediency of seeking a dissolution 
of the Union. For my part, I am for the dissolution of the Union, and 
I seek it as an Abolitionist. I seek it, first and primarily, to protect the 
slave. My second motive is, to protect the white race. Primarily, it is 
an Anti-Slavery measure. I object to the letter of Mr. Wilson, and to 
all that argument of which his letter is a type, that it is treason to the 
•Anti-Slavery movement — to the philosophy of it. No man deserves 
the name of an Abolitionist who, in arguing the slave question, sets out 
with the assumption that any human institution is to be saved at all 
hazards, come what may of the slave. The gist of Mr. Wilson's letter 
is, that in no possible contingency, for no possible purpose, will he allow 
the Union to be touched. He is not a fit leader in the Anti-Slavery 
enterprise, if he lays down any such principle. I do not know where 
my opposition to slavery will lead me ; but I know this, that wherever 
it leads me, I will go, until I reach the slave. (Loud applause.) The 
Abolitionist gives no pledge to his fellow, except this — that he will 
make his way over every obstacle, in order to reach the slave. In 
Mr. Wilson's letter, and in that whole tone of argument of which it 
is the representative, the Union is a foregone conclusion. That is 
anchored. No matter how much you may prove against it, — no matter 
how much the course of events may open your eyes to new interests 
and duties, — no matter what form the question may take, — you must 
pledge yourself not to touch the Union. How absurd the pretence of 
argument with a man who has made that pledge at the outset! — he is 
not fit to argue. On so momentous a question, we have no right to con- 
sider anything but truth and justice as settled — all mere institutions 
are afloat. We are launching a great argument ; sounding on and on 
in the voyage of statesmanship, with nothing but despair behind. We 



44 DISUNION CONVENTION. 

do not know where our vessel will take us. Common sense requires 
that we should keep every door open, free to go wherever the issue 
leads us. Slavery is so momentous an evil, that in its presence all others 
pale away. No thoughtful man can deem any sacrifice too great to 
secure its abolition. The safety of the people is the highest law. In 
this battle, we demand a clear field and the use of every honorable 
weapon. Even the monuments of our fathers are no longer sacred, if 
the enemy are concealed behind them. 

This, Mr. President, is my first claim upon every man who has an 
Anti-Slavery purpose. One of the greatest, if not the greatest question 
of the age, is that of free labor. I do not know, — no man can pro- 
phecy, — what sacrifices it will demand, no human sagacity divine what 
shape it will acquire in the kaleidoscope of the future. Nobody can 
foresee the combinations that will be necessary in order to secure lib- 
erty, and turn law into justice. The pledge we make to each other, as 
Abolitionists, is, that to this slave question, embodying as it does, the 
highest justice and the most perfect liberty, synonymous as it is with 
Right, Manhood, Justice, with pure Religion, a free Press, an impartial 
Judiciary, and a true Civilization, we will sacrifice every thing. If any 
man dissents, he is not, in any just sense, an Abolitionist. If he has 
not studied the question enough to know, that it binds up in itself all 
considerations of government, then he is not worthy of being called an 
Abolitionist. The fate of four millions of slaves, linked as it is with the 
welfare of the white race, with the purity of religion, with freedom of 
con^ience and thought, with civil liberty, whh an impartial judiciary, 
with personal character, with all civil rights, is a question deserving of 
every sacrifice. Then, when you come to the Union — what is it.'' 
This momentous something, to which every possible importance of the 
slave question is to be sacrificed — what is it? What has the Union 
ever done .^ Where are its merits? Who knows them? Who has 
stated them ? I know of but one ; it has preserved peace between 
thirty-one States ; — that is all its virtue ! 

Mrs. Abby Kellky Fostkr (interrupting) — Is that a merit ? 

Mr. Phillips — They who look on peace as a necessary condition of 
all pro<i;ress or civilization would doubtless so regard it. For my own 
part, I do not think tiiat peace between sin, and servility masquerading 
as virtue, is a benefit ! (Loud a|)plause.) 1 think, when Massachusetts 
undertook to be the bloodhound of South Carolina, in order that there 
migiit be peace between the two Slates, it was an exceedingly doubtful 
benefit. iUit what else has the Union ever done? Some claim that she 



SPEECH OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 45 

is the mother of commerce. I doubt it. I question whether the genius 
and energy of the Yankee race are not the parent of commerce and the 
fountain of wealth, much more than the Union. That race, in Holland, 
first created a country, and then, standing on piles, called modern com- 
merce into being. That race, in England, with territory just wide 
enough to keep its eastern and western harbors apart, monopolized for 
centuries the trade of the world, and annexed continents only as treasure- 
houses wherein to garner its wealth. Who shall say that the same 
blood, with only New England for its anchorage, could not drag the 
wealth of the West into its harbors ? Who shall say that the fertile 
lands of Virginia and the Mississippi enriched her because they willed 
to do so, and not because they were compelled t As long as New 
England is made of granite and the nerves of her sons of steel, she will 
be, as she always has been, the brain of North America, united or dis- 
united ; and harnessing the elements, steam and lightning, to her car of 
conquest, she will double the worth of every prairie acre by her skill, 
cover ocean with her canvas, and gather the wealth of the Western 
hemisphere into her harbors. 

I dispute, then, the value of the Union ; I do not believe in it. Grant 
all it claims as the parent of wealth, it has not produced men. Daniel 
Webster said that the virtue of the colonial institutions was, that they 
produced. Washington. The sin of the Union is, that it manufactured 
Webster. (Laughter and applause.) Carlyle says, the test of govern- 
ments is the 7)ie7i they make. W^here are our men 7 The colonies pro- 
duced the Revolutionary men ; in the " full tide of successful experi- 
ment," we haye resulted in Caleb Gushing and Franklin Pierce, and the 
knaves of the present day ! That is the full bloom of the Union ! 

The highest test of government is as a school. It is noble men that 
prove noble governments. Where are they ? The education of the 
nation, political and civil, — that is the government. What has it 
amounted to.' I do not consider that ricketty machine at Washington 
as the government. The government is in the elements which produce 
the national character, and these elements the Union, so far as it has 
had any power, has influenced to the result of producing such a people 
as now cover these thirty-one States. The Union ! Why, it has so 
chilled the heart of Massachusetts, that, like a. whipped spaniel, she 
skulked among her hills when her Senator was beaten almost to death 
in the national capitol. The Union ! It has brought thirty States to the 
level, that they see, crowded in the brief history of Kansas, every 
despotic aggression which chased the Stuarts out of England, and 



46 DISUNION CONVENTION. 

changed her government ; and yet these tame States vote the same pol- 
icy into office, after such an exhibition ! The Union, to which Mr. 
Wilson undertakes to sacrifice every possibility of the slave question, 
has yet to find the first good thing that it has done for twenty millions of 
people. For Longfellow, the Union is a gallant bark that outrides the 
storm. A storm ! When have we met one till now ? Fair weather, 
halcyon seas, constant prosperity, have been our history; — a boat 
with every other plank torn off, or a Chinese junk, would have found 
it difficult to sink. (Laughter.) This is the first storm that has ever 
assailed her, and now men counsel giving up the voyage and skulking 
into harbor, for fear of being sunk ! Who cares for the " forge " or 
" heat" in which were shaped the " anchors" of such despair? What 
is a government? It is a machine for education ; — and it \sfree speech 
that endangers this government ! Free speech, the highest attribute of 
man; — and yet it is the discussion of a great moral question that 
endangers the government! Then the sooner it goes to pieces, the bet- 
ter! As John Quincy Adams said to Charles Sumner, when he 
stood by his sick bed in Boston, " I hope to go back to Washington, in 
order to teach this Mr. Daniel Webster that there is something better 
than the Constitution of the United States, — the justice and liberty 
which it was intended to preserve." (Loud cheers.) 

I object, therefore, altogether, to this exaggerated value placed upon 
the Union. I do not believe in it. I do not believe history can be made 
hereafter to bear witness to any high value in the Union. This has been 
a decent government in its day, but it is pregnant with momentously 
bad results. It has prostituted the pulpit, — it has made the people cow- 
ards, — it has made slavery triumphant, — it has made literature vassal 
and corrupt, — it has transformer! twenty millions of people into slave- 
catchers. What a history ! We launched out with the popular determi- 
nation that the territory of the Union should be secured to liberty. The 
spirit with which we set out, under the ordinance of 1787, made all 
national territory sacred to liberty. We came down to 1819, and cow- 
ardice, born of the Union, gavo up half; we came down to 1852, and 
treason, in the garb of cowardice, gave up the whole to slavery. Behold 
the history of the Union ! Willingly do I join issue willi tiie Union- 
worshippers on the value of their idol. I say, the Fugitive Slave Law 
was not possible, and could not have been executed, in the city of Boston, 
in 1789 ; it was executed there iu 1850. Apply the torture of any cir- 
cumstances to John Jay, Luther Martin, Chancellor Wyihc, Patrick 
IJenry, and never could you extort such speeches as Daniel Webster 



SPEECH OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 47 

made the last two years of his life. The Union — behold the value 
of it! If properly be every thing — if, as Daniel Webster said, the 
whole purpose of government is to protect property, — I do not 
know but possibly banks make better dividends with the Union than 
they would without, though of that I have serious doubts ; but if 
men be the object of government, — if liberty be the object of gov- 
ernment, — if high thought, high character, a noble party, a noble 
State, with noble impulses, be the test of government, this Union is a 
failure ; for the character of this nation has been so barbarized in fifty 
years, that we must hide our faces when we compare the Senate of 
to-day with that over which even Aaron Burr presided. Look at the 
outrage on Charles Sumner ! Men have been assassinated before. If 
a man trusts himself with gold in the purlieus of great cities, he is very 
likely to be assassinated. One who quarrels with drunken bullies in the 
haunts of vice, risks assassination. But did you ever see before, in the 
Senate chamber, the focus of a civilized State, the Capitol on which mil- 
lions of eyes are fixed, — did you ever see an assassination there, with 
half a score of what are called the " statesmen " of the land looking on, 
still and silent.? I undertake to say, that in view of all the circumstan- 
ces, the outrage on Charles Sumner is not to be paralleled in the his- 
tory of civilized States. You never saw the assassination, in cool blood, 
of an unarmed man, with twelve of his peers, the foremost men in 
office, in a civilized community, present, and not an arm lifted in his 
defence ; and yet you now see a State, and, perhaps, one half the whole 
country, daring to vindicate and applaud such an act! That is the bar- 
barism to which the Union has brought these States ! You know it 
stands out in all history as the atrocious crime which countervailed all 
the merits of Oliver Cromwell, that he undertook to put his military 
boot on the Speaker's mace in the House of Commons. Every man 
who has written history since has regarded that as the lowest point 
which English history has ever touched. That very act was repeated 
on the virgin soil of Kansas, and it hardly waked a ripple on the calm 
sea of American life. Such is the result of a Union to which men are 
told to sacrifice justice, liberty and honor, the welfare of the slave, and 
an efl^ectual resistance to the Slave Power ! I do not believe in it. I 
would like to have those men who are ringing perpetual changes on the 
Union come here, and tell us what good the Union has ever done. It 
has made our large cities the scenes of riot and of fugitive slave sur- 
renders ; it has filled our pulpits with Deweys and Adamses ; it has 
filled our literature with Hillards, and Pierponts, and Bancrofts, I curse 



48 DISUNION CONVENTION. 

the Union in behalf of the white man, as well as a friend of the black 
race. There never was a greater mistake than this idolatry of the 
juggle of a Union, and never until we cut loose from it shall we have 
any hope of a system of honorable government, or any right to respect 
ourselves. 

I do not, then, tremble to approach the question of breaking up the 
Union. I have no faltering fear, no timid balancing of arguments; — 
my inmost soul is penetrated with the conviction that it is a magriifi- 
•ent conspiracy against justice, and accursed of God. (Loud applause.) 
Every page of our history since '89 is black with the Union. There 
is not a page of it to which an American can recur with any pride 
or honor; and when a pen as impartial as that of Hildreth writes 
that history, you see it — every man must see it. It is nolhing but 
the vain-glorious eulogy of Fourth of July orators; the swollen self- 
ishness of wealth eager for more gain ; of Commerce, crying " Hush ! " 
in order to have customers ; of merchants, in trembling deference to 
somebody out of whom they expect to make a dollar of profit; — it 
is only petty lawyers like Curtis, who imagine, because they can draw 
writs, they can meddle with statesmanship, (laughter and applause,) 
that have undertaken to show the value of the Union. It is rotten all 
over ! It is one great sore ! It has proved on a magnificent scale, as 
if written by the finger of God " betwixt Orion and the Pleiades," 
that Lamartine was right when he said, " Man never fastened one end 
of a chain round the neck of his brother, that God's own hand did 
not fasten the other end round the neck of the oppressor." (Cheers.) 
It is one great lazaar-house of slave and slaveholder, with the North 
buying coward bread in office by dastardly silence, and vociferating 
" Great is the Union ! " in voices thick with blood. 

I go for the dissolution of the Union, first, as an Anti-Slavery meas- 
ure. I would put it to every man who loves the Constitution of the 
United States in its essential features, if he would vote for that instru- 
ment to-day, as it stands.'' I do not believe there is a Republican 
who hears me, who, if he were standing to-day, as men stood in 
1789, and this Constitution lay on a table before him, and he were 
asked, "Will you vote for it.?" — I do not believe, 1 say, that there 
is a Republican who hears me who would vote for it. You may bol- 
ster up the Constitution as something which, having come down to you 
from the fathers of the government, you are bound to support ; but is 
there a man who, if he could have his choice, would to-day say " Aye " 
to that Constitution ? You know there is not ; and every argument 



SPEECH OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 49 

that undertakes to make it out faultless is only an attempt to hold it 
up because it exists, and because men suppose it for their interest to 
maintain it. 

In the first place, my opposition to the Union is one of personal 
honor and duty; — and this is the strongest consideration — the nucle- 
us ; — all the others are incidental, secondary. It is a question of per- 
sonal honor and duty with me. I am not going into the question of 
the technicalities of the Constitution, — I do not care now about them. 
For the purposes of this hour, we may take it for granted ithat the 
Constitution, as at present interpreted and executed, is a pro-slavery 
Constitution — used by Slavery for its own purposes; that the power 
of dictating the course to be pursued under that Constitution is in the 
hands of the Slave Power. You know what that Slave Power is. I 
do not mean by that phrase an exclusively Southern power. The 
Slave Power is here in Worcester just as much as in Charleston, S. C. 
The Slave Power is three-fold ; it has the power of wealth — two thou- 
sand millions of dollars invested in slaves, drawing to it the sympa- 
thy of all other kinds of capital. That is the first power, and in the 
nineteenth century, the money sway is omnipotent. Then it has, 
secondly, the aristocracy of the Constitution; and, thirdly, the preju- 
dice against color. The aristocracy of the Constitution! — where have 
you seen an aristocracy with half its power ? You may take a small 
town here in New England, with a busy, active population of 2500, 
and three or four such men as Gov. Aiken, of South Carolina, rid- 
ing leisurely to the polls, and throwing their visiting cards in for bal- 
lots, will blot out the entire influence of that New England town in 
the Federal Government. That is your Republicanism ! Then, when 
you add to that the element of prejudice, which is concentrated in 
the epithet " nigger," you make the three-strand cable of the Slave 
Power — the prejudice of race, the omnipotence of money, and the 
almost irresistible power of aristocracy. That is the Slave Power. 
Whatever you make of the Constitution, its administration is in the 
hands of the Slave Power. When Henry Wilson goes up to the Sen- 
ate of the United States, — if he wishes a part of that Government, — 
he must vote men into office, and vote money to carry on the Gov- 
ernment ; and he knows if he carries it on,, he carries on the Slave 
Power. He knows that when he pays John McLean, the Judge of 
Ohio, he pays him for returning fugitive slaves. (" Hear," " hear.") 
When he votes Judge Leavitt's salary, he votes to pay him for that 
trick which plunged Margaret Garner back into the hell of bondage, and 



50 DISUNION CONVENTION. 

cheated the State of Ohio out of her rights ; and I want to know when 
or where the Repuhhcan party, or any other party, ever avowed their 
purpose to be, to get the power of this Government into their hands in 
order that no dollar in its treasury shall be allowed to go for the support 
of the Slave Power ? Until they do this, politics is personably dishon- 
orable to an Abolitionist. It is paying a Government, two-thirds of 
which is directly, and the other third indirectly, covered all over with 
pro-slavery service, from the Judge on the Supreme Bench, down to the 
Marshal in the Courts. The bill which was paid for returning Anthony 
Burns was so mixed up with the salaries of officers, that it could not be 
disintegrated without stopping the whole appropriation bill. I deem the 
noblest piece of work the Republican party ever attempted was the effort 
to stop the appropriation bill. Chief Justice Marshall said once, that 
whenever Senators were omitted to be chosen, the United States Gov- 
ernment fell to pieces. Why do you not let it fall to pieces } As at 
present constituted, it is the right arm of the Slave Power, and you 
know it. South Carolina cannot breathe nor get her food a day out of 
the Union. Bankrupt, she talks of " walking out of the Union " ! Let 
her beg money to buy the crutches she stands on first ! (Laughter and 
applause.) 

1 say, sir, it is a matter of personal honor and duty with me. I do 
not see how any man can volunteer the slightest amount of personal or 
pecuniary support to a Government which, whatever was its intent in 
1789, is now practically a pro-slavery institution. I thanked God when 
I looked into the eyes of Anthony Burns, and, in reply to his agouized 
inquiry, " Can you do nothing for me ? " was obliged to answer, " Noth- 
ing " — I thanked God that at least I could say, " I never lifted a finger 
to build one stone of the Government that is resting upon your heart 
to-day." That Government returned Anthony Burns ; that Govern- 
ment is organized year after year, and every dollar in its treasury 
is spent in direct or in indirect support of slavery. You know a 
religious man, for instance, protests against idolatry, and the support 
of idolatrous Governments in Asia. Here is a Government just as 
much permeated by slavery as China or Japan with idolatry, and 
I cannot vote under it, nor voluntarily support it. I do not care for 
parchments ; they arc not the Government. There are elements be- 
neath the parchment that fashion the Government, and among these 
elements, first and beyond all others, is this Slave Power, which con- 
trols the Union. I do not know what it may be ten or fifteen years 
hence ; I do not know what it may be when it is changed ; I only know 



SPEECH OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 51 

what it is now, and I say, no Abolitionist cao support it. If there is any 
man who can tell me how, I should like to have him do so. 

Then, again, how is the Republican party ever to gain supremacy in 
the Government ? Certainly, by turning every atom of patronage and 
pecuniary profit in the keeping of the Federal Government to the sup- 
port of freedom. You know that the policy has been always acted upon, 
ever since Washington, — and it has been openly avowed ever since 
Fillmore, — that no man was to receive any office who was not sound 
on the slavery question. You remember the debate in the Senate, when 
that was distinctly avowed to be the policy of Mr. Fillmore. You re- 
member Mr. Clay letting it drop out accidentally, in debate, that the 
slaveholders had always closely watched the Cabinet, and kept a ma- 
jority there, in order to preserve the ascendancy of slavery. This is 
the policy which, in the course of fifty years, has built up the Slave 
Power. Now, how is the Republican party ever to beat that Power 
down .'. By reversing that policy, in favor of freedom. Cassius Clay 
said to me, two years ago, "■ If you will allow me to have the patronage 
of this Government five years, and exercise it remorselessly, down to 
New Orleans, — never permit anyone but an avowed Abolitionist to 
hold office under the Federal Government, — and I will revolutionize 
the slave States themselves in two Administrations." That is a scheme 
of efficient politics. But the Republican party has never yet even pro- 
fessed any such policy. Mr. Greeley, on the contrary, — and I take 
the Republican party as the highest type of political action at the present' 
time, — avowed in the Tribune, that he had often voted for a slave- 
holder willingly, and he never expected the time would come when he 
should lay down the principle of refusing to vote for a slaveholder to 
office ; — and that sentiment has not only been reiterated by others of 
the Republican party, but has never been disavowed by any one. Sup- 
pose that you could develop politics up to, this idea, that the whole pa- 
tronage of the Government should be turned in favor of Abolition. It 
would take two or three generations to overturn what the Slave Power 
has done in sixty years, with the power of aristocracy and the strength 
of prejudice on its side. With the patronage of the Government in its 
control, the Republican party must work slowly to regenerate the Gov- 
ernment against those elements in opposition, when, with them in its 
favor, the Slave Power has been some sixty years in bringing about 
such a result as we see around us. To reverse this, and work only 
with the patronage of the Government, it would take you long to effect 
the cure. In my soul, I believe that a dissolution of the Union, sure to 



52 DISUNION CONVENTION. 

result speedily in the abolition of slavery, would be a lesser evil than 
the slow, faltering, diseased, gradual dying out of slaver}'^, constantly 
poisoning us with the festering remains of this corrupt political, social 
and literary state. I believe a sudden, conclusive, definite disunion, 
resulting in the abolition of slavery speedily, in the disruption of the 
Northern mind from all connection with it, all vassalage to it, immedi- 
ately, would be a better, healthier, and more wholesome cure, than to let 
the Republican party, even if it could ever gain the power, exert this 
gradual influence through the power of the Government for thirty or 
sixty years. 

We are talking about the best way of getting rid of a great national 
evil. Mr. Wilson's way is to put down the Union as a " fixed fact," 
and then educate politics up to a certain level. In that way we have got 
to live, like Sinbad, with Gushing, and Clioate, and Hillard, and Hallett, 
and men like them, on our shoulders for the next thirty or forty years, — 
with the Deweys and President Lords, and all that class of men, — with 
the Hunker School Committees approving George Hillard's school- 
books, from which no young man, even with a million-power microscope, 
would discern that Whittier ever wrote an anti-slavery line, — all this 
timid servility of the press, — all this lack of virtue and manhood, — all 
this corruption of the pulpit, — all this fossil hunkerism, — all this selling 
of the soul Tor a mess of pottage, — is to linger, — working in the body 
politic for thirty or forty years, and we are gradually to eliminate the 
disease ! What an awful future ! What a miserable chronic disease ! 
What a wreck of a noble nation the American Republic is to be for 
fifty years ! 

That is Henry Wilson's cure — and why ? Only to save a piece 
of parchment that Elbridge Gerry had instinct enough to think did not 
deserve saving, as long ago as 1789 ! He would leave New York 
united to New Orleans, with the hope (sure to be baulked) of getting 
freer and freer from year to year. I want to place her, at once, in 
the same relation towards New Orleans that she bears to Liverjjool. 
(Applause.) You can do it, the moment you break the political tie. 
What will that do? I will tell you. The New York pulpit is to-day 
one end of a magnetic telegraph, of which the New Orleans cotton 
market is the other. The New York stock market is one end of the 
magnetic telegraph, and the Charleston Mercury is the other. New 
York statesmanship ! Why, even in the lips of Seward, it is sealed, or 
half sealed, by considerations that take their rise in the cane-brakes and 
cotton-fields of fifteen States. Break up this Union, and the ideas of 



SPEECH OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 53 

South Carolina will have no more influence on Seward than those of 
Palmerston. The wishes of New Orleans will have no more influence 
on Chief Justice Shaw than the wishes of London. The threats and 
party tactics of Brooks, Soule, Blair and Benton will have no more in- 
fluence on the Tribune than the thunders of the London Times on the 
hopes of the Chartists. Bancroft will no longer write history with one 
eye fixed on Democratic success, nor Webster invent " laws of God " 
to please Mr. Senator Douglas. We shall have as close connection, as 
much commerce ; we shall still have a common language, a common 
faith and common race, the same common social life ; we shall inter- 
marry just the same ; we shall have steamers running just as often and 
just as rapidly as now. But what cares Dr. Dewey, in New York, for 
the opinion of Liverpool ? Nothing ! What cares he for the opinion of 
Washington ? Every thing ! Break the link, and New York springs 
up like the fountain relieved from mountain load, and assumes her place 
among decent cities. (Applause.) We mean no special praise of the 
English courts, pulpit or press, by these comparison? ; our only wish is, 
to show that however close the commercial relations might continue to 
be between North and South, and in spite of that common faith and 
common tongue and common history which Avould continue to hold these 
thirty States together, still, as in the case of this country and England, 
wedded still by the same ties, the mere sundering of a political union 
would leave each half free, as that of 1776 did, from a very large share 
of the corrupt influence of the other. 

That is what I mean by Disunion. I mean to take Massachusetts, and 
leave her exactly as she is, commercially. She shall manufacture for 
the South just as Lancashire does. I know what an influence the South 
has on the manufacturers and clergy of England ; — that is irresistible 
in the nature of things. We have only human nature to work with, and 
we cannot raise it up to the level of angels. We shall never get beyond 
the sphere of human selfishness ; but we can lift this human nature up 
to a higher level, if we can but remove the weight of this political rela- 
tion which now rests upon it. What I would do with Massachusetts is 
this — I would make her, in relation to South Carolina, just what Eng- 
land is. I would to God that I. could float her ofi', and anchor her in 
mid ocean! (Loud applause.) "Where shall disunion commence .'' " 
Why, if it cannot commence any where else, I would commence it 
round Plymouth Rock. (Cheers.) Begin again, and see if we cannot 
do as much in 236 years as our fathers did — create a great nation out 
5 



54 DISUNION CONVENTION. 

of this wilderness. Would to God we had only the difficulties of an 
empty wilderness to deal with ! 

What I mean by Disunion is simply that breaking of the political 
arrangements and connections — you cannot break the others — which 
would leave us our Websters and Everetts — raw material, out of 
which, as Dr. Johnson said of Scotchmen, " if you caught them very 
young, you might make something" — (laughter and applause) ; that is, 
if you caught them young, and subjected them to wholesome influences, 
kept them out of the fatal maelstrom of national temptation. Henry 
I Wilson was a much more decent man when he was not tall enough to 
look over the fences of Massachusetts, than when he got so high that he 
could see as far off as Washington ; then his head turned slightly, and 
now he values Washington far more than he did when his ambition was 
content with the little Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 

Then, if you ask me what influence this would have on slavery, I 
answer, it would have, in the first place, the influence of political 
economy ; that, taking from the Government the support of Northern 
sympathy and countenance, the South would have to set about getting 
a government. Government is an expensive luxury. You must get 
taxes to support it. Where will you levy your taxes? They must rest 
on productions. Productions are the result of skilled labor. You must 
educate your laborer, if you would have the means for carrying on a 
government. Despotisms are cheap ; free governments are a dear 
luxury — the machinery is complicated and expensive. If the South 
wants even a theoretical Republic, she must pay for it — she must have 
a basis for taxation. How will she pay for it ? Why, Massachusetts, 
with a million workmen, men, women and children, — the little feet that 
can just toddle bringing chips from the wood-pile, — Massachusetts only 
pays her own board and lodging, and lays by about three per cent, a 
year. And South Carolina, with one half idlers, and the other half 
slaves, doing only half the work of a free man, — only one-quarter of 
the population actually at work — how much do you suppose she lays 
up? Lays up a loss ! (Laughter.) By all the laws of political economy, 
she lays up bankruptcy, — of course she does! Put her out, and let 
her see how sheltered she has been from the laws of trade by the Union. 
The free labor of the North pays her plantation patrol, we pay for her 
government, we pay for her postage, and for every thing else. Launch 
her out, and let her see if she can make the year's ends meet. And 
when she tries, she must educatejier labor in order to get the basis for 
taxation. Educate slaves ! Make a locomotive with its furnaces of open 



SPEECH OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 65 

wire work, fill them with anthracite coal, and when you have raised it 
to white heat, mount and drive it through the doors of Oliver Whipple's 
powder manufactory, and you are safe, compared with a slaveholding 
community educating its slaves. (Laughter and applause.) But South 
Carolina must do it, in order to get the basis for taxation to support an 
independent government. The moment she does it, she removes the 
safeguard of slavery. What is the contest in Virginia now .'' Between 
the men who want to make their slaves mechanics, for the enhanced 
wages it will secure, and the men who oppose, for fear of the influence 
it will have on the general security of slave property and white throats. 
Just that dispute will go on, if ever the Union is dissolved. Slavery 
comes to an end by the laws of trade. Hang up your Sharp's rifle, my 
valorous friend ! The slave does not ask the help of your musket. He 
only says, like old Diogenes to Alexander, " Stand out of my light ! " 
Just take your awkward proportions, you Yankee Democrat and Repub- 
lican, out of the light and heat of God's laws of political economy, and 
they will melt the slave's chains away ! (Enthusiastic applause.) Take 
your distorted Union, your nightmare monster, out of the light and 
range of those laws of trade and competition ; then, without any sacri- 
fice on your part, slavery will go to pieces ! God made it a law of his 
universe, that villany should always be loss ; and if you will only not 
attempt, with your puny efforts, to stand betwixt the inevitable laws of 
God"s kingdom, as you are doing to-day, and have done for sixty years, 
by the vigor that the industry of sixteen States has been able to infuse 
into the sluggish veins of the South, slavery will drop to pieces by the 
very influence of the competition of the nineteenth century. That is 
what we mean by Disunion ! (Applause.) 

The slaveholder says that the Union is his safeguard. Mr. Wilson 
is for preserving it at every hazard. I like to learn from the enemy. 
If the slaveholder loves the Union, I hate it ; the love of so sagacious a 
tyrant is authority enough for my hate. (Applause.) If the slaveholder 
clings to the Union, it is instinct. " Instinct is a great matter," says 
Shakspeare. Every Abolitionist that ever got his head above water was 
saluted by the title " Traitor ! " The slaveholder knew what he was 
about when he said so, for he felt that if the man ever got his heart also 
above water, he would feel that treason was his first duty. The Union 
has been too great a temptation for Northern liberty. The South has 
bought up our great men faster than nature could make them. (Ap- 
plause.) It always will. It is true of our pulpit, of our literature, of 
our statesmanship — the temptation is too great. All the temptations of 



56 DISUNION CONVENTION. 

self-interest are on the side of slavery. You say you are going to 
change them. How are you going to change them ? You cannot 
change them by the Sermon on the Mount. I do not doubt the power 
of the Sermon on the Mount in the long run. Truth will conquer, if 
you give her time. Centuries hence, Ideas will conquer even the ma- 
terial strength of the country ; but to-day, in Wall Street, two per cent, 
a month is its Sermon on the Mount (laughter) ; and as long as it is so. 
Wall Street will bow before two thousand million of dollars, invested in 
slaves; and as long as that is so, the Bankses, who think themselves 
fortunate to get upon the steps of the Merchants' Exchange, will bow to 
Wall Street, and its Gospel of two per cent, a month. 

You cannot raise politics above the level of the average public senti- 
ment. I know that, in the long process of t"ime, we could reeducate the 
nation. But what new circumstances that far future may bring, I know 
not. We are working with the tools nearest our hands. I believe that 
Banks and Webster, and that class of men, are as good men as in the 
ordinary — the average. What I want is, to tempt them to justice. 
When you want an Irish donkey to go ahead, you put a bundle of hay 
before his nose. That is just what the South does with every politician, 
— it has a bribe for them all. As long as men like Caleb Cushing can 
have seventy million of dollars per annum to bestow in patronage, I 
have no hope for the nation ; and I do not believe there is but one Caleb 
Cushing in all Yankeedom ; — Nature did not "break the die" when 
she had made him. (Loud applause.) Suppose such a man, with 
seventy million of dollars to spend annually, to go out into the highways 
and byways, and into the House of Representatives of an Anti-Slavery 
Congress, and do you believe that within our day there is any hope of 
such a state of immaculate virtue, of high-toned honor, as will secure 
such a momentous triumph as that of Liberty against Slavery? I doubt 
it. At any rate, the most hopeful method of getting out of danger is, 
not to struggle vainly against the Cataract of Niagara, but to get out of 
the sweep of the current. The Republican is forced to confess that the 
Slave Power is almost as omnipotent as the downward current of Niag- 
ara, and he proposes to go up the Falls ! Now, Disunion means to avoid 
them ; or rather, it proposes to dig down the whole rampart of Table 
Rock, and produce a dead level, without a current. (Cheers.) It pro- 
poses to take bad circumstances out of the way. It proposes to take 
down this government that our fathers created, which is found not to 
work well. That is all it proposes. 

Does any man think that anarchy will result .' Why should it ? 



SPEECH OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 57 

Anarchy does not consist in the absence of parchments. The same 
conservative elements that keep the government in place now, will exist 
then. Massachusetts does not make money merely because South Car- 
olina has the right to whip slaves. That is not the element of her pros* 
perity. The element lies in the fact, as Ward Beecher says, that there 
are more brains in a Yankee's hands than in most men's heads. There- 
fore we make money ; therefore we are a well-ordered State ; and we 
shall always be so while that fact remains. Dissolution of the Union 
gets rid of slavery, because it is an artificial institution, backed up by 
artificial laws, which, when you let down the waters to a common level, 
must go to pieces by the action of gravity. The dissolution of the 
Union is removing the dam. To-day the white man stands with his heel 
on the head of the slave. You and I stand behind him — you, voters, 
directly, and all of us, by the impossibility of making our protest fully 
known. When dissolution takes place, I do not say the slave will cut 
his master's throat, or burn his mansion-house. All I say is, that he 
will probably try to do it, unless the master plants in his heart a motive 
not to do so ;• and until he does, " God speed the first insurrection in the 
Carolinas ! " I have no love for insurrections ; but " Hands off! " is a 
good Saxon motto. Let the two races fight it out ; and if the white man 
has no means of defence, by making the black man love him, then he 
will suffertfor the misgovernment of two centuries. That is his own 
lookout. Gen. Wilson says, he " believes that the liberal, high-minded, 
just (!) men of the South will, in their own time and in their own way, 
bring about a safe emancipation." I never knevv of a race of oppres- 
sors that was preached into doing justice ; they have always been bullied 
into it. If any man thinks otherwise, let him show me a single instance 
where a powerful, despotic class ever voluntarily surrendered power out 
of its own hands. I believe in the slaveholder being brought to give 
bonds for good behavior, by the circumstances in which he is to be 
placed, by the necessities of his position. Talk of chivalry ! The 
whole South is one great magazine of cowards ! Ten slaves in the 
upper corner of Tennessee are suspected (for they did not keep the 
poor fellows alive long enough to prove it) of an intention to rebel, and 
the easternmost corner of chivalrous Virginia trembles ! too mad with 
fear to wait the second news from Tennessee, that there was no plot or 
purpose to rise. Our old Professor of Natural Philosophy, John Farrar, 
used to say to us, — with great solemnity, — "If I touch that spot, the 
universe trembles." It was true ; and when a slave makes an impudent 
answer on the banks of the Mississippi, South Carolina trembles. That 



68 DISUNION CONVENTION. 

is the chivalry of the South ! That present fear is kept down by the 
consciousness that sixteen States, with their powerful free blood and 
organized strength, stand round the system. Take it off! That fear is 
God's own stimulus to virtue — let it have full play! When they set 
horses to run in the Roman races, each horse bears about him a little 
net-work of pointed pricks, that the faster he goes, makes him run yet 
faster. I would set the slaveholder to running, with four millions of* 
slaves for the pricks. (Applause.) Dissolution is my method for that 
race. Dissolution, in other words, is only the philosophy of letting nat- 
ural causes have free play. I would take down the dam of the Union, 
and let loose the torrent of God's own water-courses; and, like every 
current, you may be sure it will clear a channel for itself. (Loud 
applause.) 

The Convention then adjourned to Brinley Hall, at 7 o'clock. 



EVENING SESSION ^ 

The Convention was called to order by Rev. Mr. Hi^ginson. 

A letter was read from Hon. George R. Russell, of Roxbury. [See 
Appendix.] 

After the reading of this letter, Mr. Higginson, in behalf of the Com- 
mittee on Resolutions, offered the following as an addition to the series 
offered at the morning session : — 

Resolved, That a State Committee of seven be appointed, -whose duty it shall 
be, by means of Conventions, tracts, newspapers, and political or other organiza- 
tions, public and private, to secure the efficient propagation of the doctrine 
and policy which this Convention proclaims. 

liesolved, That we especially recommend the calling of a general Convention 
of the free States during the current year. 

Resolved, That the State Committee be instructed to prepare and issue, as soon 
as possible, an address to the people in behalf of our principles. 

The Hutchinsons then sang the anti-slavery song, entitled " Right and 
Wrong, or the Good Time Coming" ; after which, the Convention was 
addressed by Stephen S. Foster, of Worcester. 

Mr. Foster argued that the mass of the people were ripe for revolu- 
tion — they felt that this Union ought to be dissolved, and were ready to 
do their part in the work ; — they were not the politicians, the merchants 



PKOCEEDINGS. 69 

and manufacturers, but they were the independent, hard-fisted yeo- 
manry of the land, if they could see some practical way of accom- 
plishing it. 

He was in favor of the organization of a political party in the State, 
outside of the Federal Union, and abjuring all connection witli the 
United States Constitution. 

He concluded by offering a series of resolutions, which he said he did 
not expect would be passed, but which he desired, nevertheless, should 
go into the record of the proceedings : — 

1. Resolved, That as men and citizens, we claim the right fully to discuss the 
chai'acter and claims of our political institutions, and to amend, revolutionize or 
abolish them, in accordance with our own convictions of duty ; nor shall we be 
deterred from the exercise of this right by the denunciations or threats of time- 
serving politicians or a mercenary press. 

2. Resolved, That the experience of more than sixty years has proved our 
national government to be a mere creature and tool of the Slave Power, subser- 
vient only to the purposes of despotism — a formidable obstacle to the advancement 
and prosjjerity both the free and slave States — a libel upon all our Democratic 
theories of government — a disgrace to the civilization of the age, and a bitter curse 
to the cause of freedom in our own country and throughout the world. 

3. Resolved, That in view of this long and painful experience, we have no 
longer any hope of its reformation, but are fully convinced tliat the best interests 
of every section of the country requii'e its immediate dissolution. 

4. Resolved, That it is the duty of the friends of freedom in all parts of the 
country to unite upon some practical and well-devised measures for the accom- 
plishment of this object, and for the subsequent organization of a National Gov- 
ernment which shall neither tolerate slavery nor any other institution which is at 
variance with our Democratic theories. 

5. Resolved, That this Convention recommends, as the first step towards the 
accomplishment of this object, the organization in each of the States of a political 
party outside of the present Constitution and Union — a party whose candidates 
shall be publicly pledged, in the event of their election, to ignore the Federal 
Government, to refuse an oath to its Constitution, and to make their respective 
States free and independent communities. 

Mr. Phillips then Took the platform, and delivered an address, that 
was even more eloquent than his speech in the afternoon ; at the close 
of which, Mr. Wilkins, of Pembroke, spoke to the Convention, in oppo- 
sition to the views of previous speakers. He considered the Constitu- 
tion an anti-slavery instrument, and was for adhering to the Union, and 
organizing a party which should take the ground that the Constitution 
did not authorize,- tolerate, or establish slavery. 

Parker Pillsbury then took the platform, and occupied about half 



60 DISUNION CONVENTION. 

an hour in an earnest and powerful speech, reviewing the political his- 
tory of the country for the past ten or fifteen years, and vindicating the 
radical and uncompromising doctrine of Disunion as the only hope for 
the salvation of the slave and the redemption of the land. The his- 
tory of the political Anti-Slavery enterprise, he said, was a history rich 
in instruction, and was a remarkable verification of the apostolic senti- 
ment, that " the wisdom of man is foolishness with God." Mr. P.'s 
address was listened to with the deepest interest, and frequently ap- 
plauded. 

The question was then taken on the resolutions, and they were 
declared adopted. 

The following gentlemen were appointed the State Committee, as 
ordered by the resolution reported by the Business Committee : — 

STATE COMMITTEE. 

Rev. T. W. Higginson, ofWorcester; Gen. E. M. Hosmer, of AV. Boylston ; 
Hon. Francis W. Bird, of Walpole ; Charles Brigham, of Marlboro'; 
Charles K. Whipple, of Boston ; Rev. Samuel May, Jr., of Leicester ; 

Dr. Daniel Mann, of Sterling ; Seth Hunt, of Northampton ; 

Elbridge Sprague, of Abington. 

After another song from the Hutchinsons, and the transaction of some 
business relating to organization, the Convention adjourned. 

FRANCIS W. BIRD, President. 

J. M. W. Yerrinton, ) e 4 • 
c T^ rT^ } Secretaries. 

S. D. TOURTELOTTE, ) 



APPENDIX. 



LETTER FROM HON. AMASA WALKER, 

(formerly secretary of state for MASSACHUSETTS.) 

North Brookfield, Jan. 10th, 1857. 

Dear Sir, — I have received your letter, inviting me, in behalf of a Com- 
mittee, to attend a convention to be held at Worcester, on the 15th instant, 
" to consider the practicability, probability, and expediency of a separation 
between the free and slave States." 

I do not now expect that my engagements will allow me to be present 
at your Convention. I should be happy to do so, for I am not in the least 
afraid to hear the questions you propose to consider, discussed in all their 
bearings, and to the fullest extent. I hold it as a settled principle, that when- 
ever it is authoritatively assumed that any subject, political or religious, is so 
sacred that no one has a right to examine it in broad daylight, and with perfect 
freedom, then we may be sure that the subject, thus tabooed, is one we have 
especial occasion to investigate. 

That your Convention and its proceedings will be denounced in the most op- 
prol)rious terms — that the press universal will open its batteries upon you, for 
even venturing to inquire into " the expediency of a separation of the free and 
slave States," I feel quite assured ; and that such are your expectations I have 
no doul)t. I therefore admire your courage, in thus braving the newspaper 
wrath of the country, North and South. For it is a fact, as curious as it is 
significant, that, while the Southern press teems with the most violent and 
ultra disunion sentiments, the moment any movement is made at the North, 
contemplating even the possibility of such an event, the whole South is thrown 
into convulsions at our treasonable proceedings, and joins its Northern allies in 
their aspersions and maledictions ! 

To cry up the Union, and cry down all those who, in the free States, in 
any way or manner, however calmly and discreetly, examine the great ques- 
tion, whether our permanent national prosperity and happiness can be pre- 
served, while the dcjad carcass of slavery is bound to the living body of free- 
dom, seems at the present day to be the great business of politicians and 
the press. 

For one, I must confess, I am sick of so much cant about '* the Union." 
I know perfectly well that it is feigned and false — that those who indulge in it 
do it because they think they must, and lest they should be themselves damned 
as " disunionists " — a name of reproach they dread, far more than that of 
" traitors to freedom." Our political men seem to feel, that, so long as they 
insist that they are in favor of the Union, at all hazards and in every 
emergency, they are safe ; hence they are constantly shouting, at the top of 
their voices, " Great is Diana of the Ephesians ! " 

In my humble opinion, it is high time that this hypocritical bluster was 
silenced. But that work can only be done in primary assemblies of the yeo- 



manry of the country, like that you propose to hold. The people of Massachu- 
Betts, I have the best reason to know, are quite ready to take the ground, frac- 
tically, that they will have liberty and Union, or no Union whatever. They are 
ready not only to declare, but to act, on the principle that freedom shall be 
permanent and dominant, that slavery shall surrender all claims to control 
affairs of this nature, or they will cut off all connection with it. There never 
was a time in the history of this country when the people needed bold and de- 
termined leaders more tlian at thjs moment. But such leaders the people must 
themselves create by resolving that such men, and such only, shall receive 
their countenance and support. If the people will but exhibit the right spirit, 
they will soon have leaders of the right stamp. 

No one thing, as it seems to me, is so threatening to all our great interests as 
the blind idolatry which the press of the country, whether literary, political, 
or religious, pays to " the Union ; " nothing is so calculated to enslave the 
people, stupify the public conscience, and destroy all true manhood. I have 
not the least hojie for our land until this abject, craven spirit is rebuked, 
and men speak out as boldly and freely on the subject of " the Union " as they 
do on other matters. 

The Union, we should remember, is a means, and not an end. While it can 
be used to promote the great interests of freedum, and accelerate human 
progress, every man should give to it his hearty and cheerful support ; the mo- 
ment it ceases to answer that end, or becomes an engine of tyranny and op- 
pression, it should be at once and for CA^er repudiated. Such are my honest and 
earnest convictions, and I will utter them fully and frankly, at whatever peril. 

I am a Union man, with alfmy heart and soul, and I desire most anxiously 
that all the States of our great confederacy should remain together in har- 
ifiony and peace, provided the great ideas of the Declaration of Independence 
Cian be fully realized by it, but certainly not otherwise. liow this can be done 
seems now, after all the demonstrations we have had, more than proldematical. 
Slavery and freedom are absolute and irreconcilable antagonisms, that cannot 
by any human possibility coexist. There is not, never was, and never can be, any 
" concord between Christ and Belial." 

Now I think that the more fully and calmly we examine this great ques- 
tion, the l)ettcr it will be for our common country. The mcossant stream of 
fulsome adulation of the Union, which flows from the press of the North, 
degrades and disgraces us in the eyes of the people of the South, and leads them 
to despise and trample on us. They regard it, as well they may, as mean, 
dastardly, and mercenary. We shall never take one step in the right direction 
until we have, in the most unequivocal manner, announced to them, in 
langiuige tliey can neither misconstrue nor misunderstand, that we are deter- 
mined that yVeec/om shall be national, that slavery, if allowed to exist at all, 
shall be a local institution, to be tolerated only within its present limits, and 
that every proper means shall ha used to terminate it as soon as practicalde ; 
that the General Government shall not recognise it at all,* or give it counte- 
nance, either directly or indirectly. 

Now, sir, if the object of yourself and your associates is to awaken the peo- 
ple to a free and fearless discussion of this great (juestion, witli a determiua- 
tion to act in such a manner as their convietion sliall dictate, let that action 
be what it, may, then 1 am with you ; if not, then you can, and d(»ul»tles8 
will, go on very satisfactorily without me; Imt at all events, I am right glad 
that somebody has ha<l the courage to move in this matter. The spell must 
be broken, even at the risk of broken heads, and those who have the hardihood 
to engag(! in such a work, are the men to do it. 

It is now twenty-five years since I entered the anti-slavery fiel^d, and en- 
gaged in active efliirts to sti;m the fearful tide of oppression in our land. 
The lujme of time, the; experience and oliservatioii of a ((uarter of a century, 
have more ajid more convinced me of the tirrible nature of that great sys- 



LETTER FROM HON. HEOTIT WILSON. 6 

tern of chattel slavery by which, as a people, we are disgraced and demor- 
alized. While I live, therefore, whether acting in the moral or political 
field, in the Church or State, I hope and intend to be found faithful and 
true to the great interests of humanity. Under the banner of Freedom I 
have hitherto fought, and under that banner, -whether inscribed with Union 
or Disunion, I intend to fight to the last. 

I have the honor to be, dear Sir, 

Your friend and servant, 

AMASA WALKER. 
Rev. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Worcester. 



LETTER FROM HON. HENRY WILSON. 

Senate Chamber, Jan. 10, 1857. 
Rev. T. W. Higginson : 

Dear Sir, — I have received your note, enclosing the call of several citi- 
zens of Worcester, who Mieve " the existing Union to Ije a failure," upon the 
people of Massachusetts, " to meet in Convention, at Worcester, on Thursday, 
the 15th of January, to consider the practicability, probability, and expediency 
of a separation of the free and slave States ; " and inviting me, in behalf of 
the Committee of Arrangements, " to be present, or to communicate my senti- 
ments, on the suliject in question." Your Committee of Arrangements could 
not expect me to " be present " at your Convention ; but as you have invited 
me "to communicate my sentiments," I will frankly do so. 

I have read, with sincere and profound regret, this call on the people of 
Massachusetts " to meet in Convention to consider the practicability, probabil- 
ity, and expediency of a separation of the free and slave States. "_ I regret 
to find gentlemen rushing into a movement which can have no other issues than 
to put a burden upon the cause to which they have given so many years of 
^elt-sacrificing toil, and to impair their influence in the future. Impotent for 
good, this movement can only be productive of evil. It may be seized upon by 
adroit political leaders to alarm the timid ; to deceive and mislead those who 
have already been deluded and misled by artful men into the support of the 
interests of slavery. Imprudent words and rash deeds, on the part of the 
opponents of slavery, only add to the power of those in the North and in the 
South, who have used the people to secure the ascendency of the slave propa- 
gandists. 

The American people are a patriotic people. They love their country — their 
whole country. The preservation of that Union which makes us one people, 
is with them a duty imposed alike by interest and patriotism. If the move- 
ment at Worcester shall have any effect at all, it will only serve to array 
against those who are battling to arrest the further extension of slavery, and 
the longer domination of the slave perpetualists, that intense, passionate and 
vehement spirit of nationality which glows in the bosoms of the American 
people. 

I avail myself, therefore, of your invitation to "communicate my senti- 
ments" to the Convention, to 'frankly announce to you and the signers of 
the call, that I have no sympathy for, nor can I have any connection with, 
any movement which contemplates the dissolution of the Union. The logic 
of the head and the logic of the heart teach me to regard all such movements, 
either in the North or the South, as crimes against liberty. I denounced, dur- 
ing the late canvass, the unpatriotic an4 treasonable language of Southern 



politicians and presses. I have denounced them hero, on the floor of the 
Senate. I shall hold the incoming Administration responsible before the coun- 
try, if it bestows its patronage upon the Richmond Enquirers, Charleston Mer- 
cury s, and New Orleans Deltas; and I shall rcvsist the cunfirmation of the 
Wises, the Floyds, and the Rhetts of the South, if they shall be placed before 
us for official positions. 

I cannot but indulge the hope, that when the signers of this call assem- 
ble in the heart of our good old Commonwealth, they will conclude to 
leave all the impotent and puerile threats against the Union to the Southern 
slave propagandists, and proclaim their readiness to follow, in the conflicts ot 
the future, the banner of "Liberty and Union," around which rallied, 
in the late canvass, nearly fourteen hundred thousand intelligent and patriotic 
American freemen. A firm and inflexible adherence to this constitutional 
and patriotic position will, I am confident, secure the prohibition of slavery 
in all places under the executive authority of Congress, overthrow the slave 
power in the National Government, and prepare the way for the peaceful 
emancipation of the bondmen by the consent of the people of the slaveholding 
States. Yours, truly, 

HENRY WILSON. 



LETTER FROM REV. THEODORE PARKER. 

Railroad Cars from New Haven to } 
Boston, Jan. 18, 1857. J 

My Bear Higginson : 

I have no time but car-time, and no space but the railroad, so you will ex- 
cuse me if my letter be writ with a pencil, and dated between nowhere and ev- 
erywhere. 

I cannot attend your Convention to-morrow, as other business takes me 
elsewhere. Yet I am glad you have called it. For the South has so long cried 
" wolf," " wolf," and frightened every sheepish politician at the North, that ' 
it is time somebody should let those creatures have a glimpse of the real ani- 
mal, and see how the South will like his looks. I once heard of a very 
honest, sober and Christian sort of a man, who was unequally yoked to one 
of the most shrewish mates that ever cursed soul or body. She was thrift- 
less, idle, drunken, dirty, lewd, shrill-voiced, with a tongue which went 
night and day, and was, besides, feeble-bodied, and ugly to look upon. More- 
over, she beat the children, starved them, and would not allow them even 
to attend school, or to go to meeting, })ut brought up the girls in loose 
ways. Whenever the good man ventured to remonstrate a little, and took 
the part of one of his own children, the termagant, who came of no good 
stock herself, but had an " equivocal generation," called him a "beggar," 
"greasy mechanic," an "abolitionist," and with ghastly oaths told him 
he was " not fit company for a lady of her standing" ; and if he found fiiult 
•with her standing and character, she would leave his bed and board fur ever, 
and let his old house fall about his ears fi)r him. Slic justified her conduct by 
quoting odd-ends of Scripture. She had " divine authority" for all she was 
doing. " AVasn't tliere Jezebel, in the Old Testament, and the strange wo- 
man who turned the heart of Soh>mon, and his head too? Did not the book 
of Proverbs speak of just such a woman as she was ; and was there not anoth- 
er greut creature in scarlet, spoken of in the New Testament ? The book of 
Revelation was on her side." So the shrew raised her broom-stick, and 
beat the poor hen-pecked husband till he apologized as humbly as any Repub- 



LETTER FROM REV, THEODORE PARKER. 5 

lican member of Congress in 1856 or '57. He did not intend to interfere 
with her beating his sons, or prostituting his girls ; he thought her in- 
teri^retation of the Bible was right — there were probii])ly just such women as 
she in Sodom and Gomorrah ; he bogged she " would not leave his house." She 
" mio-ht beat him — he was a non-resistant : but he hoped she would not 
strike too hard, for it really hurt his feelings." 

So it went on till the house became a nuisance to the neighborhood, and the 
submissive husband was every where looked upon as a cowardly sneak. But, 
one day, he made up his mind to make a spoon or spoil a horn, and, with his 
ox-whip in his hand, thus addressed the shrew : " Madam, I shall treat you 
gently, for your wickednes is partly my fault ; but I turn over a new leaf to- 
day. Either you become a good wife, or else you leave my house, and that 
for ever, with the little bundle of property you brought into it. I shall take 
the children. Take five minutes to make up your mind. Go or stay, just 
as you like." 

To the amazement of the man, she fell down at his feet, weeping bitterly, 
promised all manner of good things, and, after he had lifted her up, actu- 
ally began to put the house in order. She treated him with respect, and her 
children with considerable tenderness, and for many years they lived togeth- 
er with about as much welfare as man and wife commonly enjoy. _ 

I am glad to see any sign of manhood in the North, and I think a fire 
in the rear of some of our Republican members of Congress will do_ them no 
harm. But 1 do not myself desire a dissolution of the Union just now. 
Here is the reason : The North is seventeen millions strong ; and the South 
contains eleven millions, whereof four millions are slaves, and four millions 
are " poor whites." Now, 1 don't think it quite right for the powerful North 
to back out of the Union, and leave the four millions " poor whites," and 
the four millions slaves, to their present condition, with the ghastly conse- 
quences which arc sure to follow. Men talk a great deal about the Compro- 
mises of the Constitution, but forget the GUARANTEES of the Constitu- 
tion. The very article which contains the ambiguous "rendition clause," 
has also these plain words: "The United States shall guarantee a re- 
publican form of government to every State in the Union." Art. 4, sec. 4. 
[I quote from memory. You can look at the passage.] Now, I would per- 
form that obligation before I dissolved the Union. I don't think it would 
have been quite fair for strong-minded Moses to stay in Midian, keeping his 
sheep and junketing with his neighbors. No. " So the Lord saidunto him, 
Down into Egypt with you ; meet Pharaoh face to face, and bring up all 
Israel into the land 1 shall give you. It is not enough to save your own souls 
alive, ])ut your brethren also, with their wives and little ones.' Why, even 
that hen-pecked husband in the story had too much stuff to desert his sons 
and daughters, and run away from their ugly dam. No, sir; the North 
must do well by those four millions of slaves, and those four millions of " poor 
whites"; we must bring the mixed multitude even out of the inner house 
of bondage, peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must. 

But, if you insist on separation, and will make dissolution the basis of 
agitation, why, I think much good will come of it. Let me give a hint as to 
the line l)f demarkation between the two new nations. I would say — Free- 
dom shall take and keep,— 1, the land east of the Chesapeake Bay; 2, all 
that is north of the Potomac and the Ohio ; all that is west of the Missis- 
gippi_i. e., all the actual territory with the right of reversicm in Mexico,. 
Nicaragua, and the " rest of mankind; " the entire State of Missouri, Ar- 
kansas, and Texas, with the part of Louisiana west of the Mississippi., 

I think the North will not be content with less than this. Nay, I am not 
sure that in case of actual separation, Virginia and Kentucky would not beg 
UB to let the amputating knife go clear down to Nortli Carolina and Tennes- 
eee, and cut there ; for I think there is too much freedom yet in the north- 



ernmost slave States to consent to be left to perish with the general rot of the 
slave limbs. 

I used to think this tertible question of freedom or slavery in America 
would be settled without bloodshed ; I believe it now no longer. The South 
does not seem likely to give way — the termagant has had her will so long ; 
I am sure the North will not much longer bear or forbear. I think we shall 
not consent to have Democracy turned out of the American houso, and 
allow Despotism to sit and occupy therein. If tlie North and the South ever 
do lock horns and push for it, there is no doubt which goes into the ditch. 
One weighs seventeen millions, the other eleven millions ; but, besides, the 
Southern animal is exceedingly weak in the whole hind-quarters — four mil- 
lions in weight, not strong in the fore-quarters, of the same bulk, and stiff 
only in the neck and head — of which Bully Brooks is a fair sample — while the 
Northern creature is weak only in the neck and horns, which would be- 
come stiff enough in a little time. 

Yours for the Right, am-how, 

THEODORE PARKER. 



LETTER FROM HON. JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. 

Washington City, Jan. 7, 1857. 

T. W. HlGGES'SON : 

DfeAR Sir, — I have received your note inviting me, on behalf of the Com- 
mittee of Arrangements, to attend a Convention in Worcester on Thursday next, 
which is expected to assemble for the purpose of considering the practicability, 
the probability, and expediency, of a separation between the free and slave 
States. The questions are of a grave charactt-r, and should be well considered. 
Indeed, amid all that has been said and written upon the suliject of slavery, tor 
the last five years, and the action of the Federal government for its extension, it 
were impossible that reflecting men should have failed to consider the projiriety 
of continuing the Union between our free and slave States ; nor is it jiossible 
for us to disguise the fact that slavery and freedom are opposites, antago- 
nisms, and cannot well exist together. 

Our republican fathers, in laying down tlie essential truths on which they 
based their hoj)es of t>ur nation's glory, first stat(-d the right of all men to 
life, lil)erty, and happiness ; then declared that governments are instituted 
among men to secure the enjoyment of thosi; riglits ; and thirdly, they proclaim- 
ed a further self-evident truth, " that u-henrrcr any form of government Ix comes 
destructive of thexe ent/s, it is the rie/ht of the people to alter or abolish it, and 
institute a new government, laying its foundations on such principles, and or- 
ganizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect 
their safety and happiness.''^ 

I hesitate not to say, that this government has been so administered,' for 
the last quarter of a century, as to be destructive of the lives, tlie liberties, 
and happiness of a portion of the people ; in short, it has become destructive 
of the very obje(!ts for which it was estalilished. Its influence and its 
powers have been exerted to extend tlie most liarbarous system of human 
bondage known to mankind. Three distinct and separate wars Iiave b(>en 
waged to uphold and maintain the system of American slavery. More tlian 
three hundred millions of dollars liave been drawn from tlie pockets of our 
laboring people, and paid out l)y government for that purjiose ; and moro 
t\\:u\ five hundred thousand human victims have been sent to premature graves, to 
uphold and maintain tiic interests of an institution whidi the jiresent admia- 



LETTER FROM BOX. J, R. GIDDINGS. 7 

istration and its supporters are seeking to extend and eternize. In one of the 
wars alluded tu, eighfi/ thovsand freemen were sacrificed to this Moloch of op- 
pression, and, in one day, nearly three hundred fathers, mothers, and children 
were barbarously butchered by our army, for no other crime than attach- 
ment to their (iod-given rights of liberty ; and the groans of men and wo- 
men, murdered in Kansas by employees of the government, have not yet ceased 
to ring in our ears. 

We have acquired vast territory, and spread the curse of human bondage 
over it ; we have erected nine slaveholding States, and united them to our 
federal Union ; we have authorized slavery in Utah, New Mexico, and Western 
Texas; we have authorized a coastwise commerce in human flesh, -rt-hich is 
now carried on under the protection of the American flag ; we have estab- 
lished slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia, and involved our 
people of the free States in the disgrace, the crime, and the expense of return- 
ing fugitives from oppression. Under the fostering love of this federal gov- 
ernment, the number of slaves has increased more than three millions ; and 
throughout fifteen States and their territories, bereaved fathers and mothers 
mourn the loss of children, torn from their embrace by brutal slave-dealers, 
and brothers and sisters, separated from each other, sigh and weep in chains, 
and uiillions of hearts are bleeding under the accumulated wrongs of that 
institution. 

Our government has long been administered with the evident intentiotl to 
overthrow the olijects and purposes of those who founded it. Even the Union 
formed by our fathers was long since abandoned, and a new Union formed ^*^ith 
foreign slaveholders, for the avowed purpose of extending and perpetuating 
slavery, giving the single band of one hundred Texan slaves an influence over the 
national interests of our free States, equal to sixty-one of the intelligent free- 
men of the North, 

Will slaveholders, or their servile allies, insist that I am bound to revere and 
cherish this Union with Texas, as the work of our Republican fathers ? I 
repudiate the idea. It was the work of Democratic slaveholders and their 
mini(jns, against my eflbrts, and against the eftbrts of the friends of liberty, 
against the Constitution, and by the sacrifice of the honor and .self-respect of 
the people of the free States. My ancestors did not toil through seven 
years of anxiety and bloodshed, for the purpose of subjugating their offspring 
to the control of slaveholding foreigners, upon such disgraceful terms. To pre- 
tend that I feel attachment, love, or veneration, for this new Union with Texas, 
would baspeak myself a slave. I maintain it from no such emotions. Our 
Northern people maintain it very much as the Hungarians maintain theit 
union with Austria, for the re^ason that we can do no better. According to the 
Democratic doctrine, Congress may, to-morrow, repeal the joint resolution of 
annexation, and the Union would be dissolved. 

Will the slaveholders or the minions of the slave power denounce me for 
speaking these truths ? I bow to no such tyranny. The man who dare not 
speak his honest convictions is already a slave, and he who would geal the lips 
of freemen, on any subject, is a tyrant at heart, with no just conception of a 
freeman's right. Our Union must be maintained by justice, not by tyranny. 
I hesitate not to declare, that this federal government has been destructive of 
the ends for which it was instituted, and the people now hold the clear and 
indisputable right to alter or abolish it, and establish a new one ; and that 
the further maintenance of it is purely a question ofpolici/, not of duty. 

To the provocations enumerated, Southern statesmen have constantly added 
threats to dissolve the Union. It is a notorious fact, that for thirty years 
leading Southern men have cherished the hope of forming a Southern Con- 
federacy, separate and independent of the free States ; recently, this jilan has 
come into very general favor at the South, Editors and politicians now an- 
nounce their determination to secede from the Union as soon as the Rcpuhli- 



APPENDIX. 



cans shall obtain control of the Federal government, which they generally expect 
to take place in 1860. Preparatory to this event, they are collecting arms, 
establishing magazines of powder and military supplies, strengthening their 
defences, organizing and disciplining their militia, and forming associations 
and combinations to effect a separation from our free States. Their presses and 
statesmen generally assert also that they will separate from us, unless the in- 
fluence of slavery be extended in proportion as freedom expands, over our ter- 
ritories and new States ; and they demand that Utah, with its polygamy, and 
slavery, and concubinage, shall be received into political fellowship by the de- 
scendants of the Pilgrims : that New England puritanism shall mingle with the 
heathenism of Mormon : permitting the barbarians of Utah to hold superior 
influence in the common government, in proportion to the number of their 
wives, their slaves, and concubines. They also insist that another Union 
shall be formed with the Simnish slaveholders of Cuba, giving them superior 
influence and power in the government, proportioned to the number of their 
slaves. 

Against their designs, we should exert all our influence. Indeed, the people 
of that free State must be disgraced, who will consent to be tluis transferred to 
the control of Spanish slaveholders, or of the polygamists of Utah. I would 
maintain the Union as it now is, because it can be wielded for the benefit of 
liberty. But I would not see the people of my State transferred to such 
new Union. 

Under these circumstances, I think it our true policy and interest to pre- 
pare for the future. Say to our slaveholding friends and their allies, we will 
maintain our present Union, but we will not be transferred to an unequal and 
dishonorable Union with the polygamists of Utah, nor to an equally disgraceful 
Union with Cuban slaveholders; that the Federal Government shall be re- 
stored to the maintenance of the objects and purposes for which it was framed. 

I may be permitted to say, that the Republican party is already in the 
field, basing its hopes of success upon the undying truths, " that all men are 
endowed by their Creator with the inalienal)le right to life, liberty, and hap- 
piness ; that the primal object and ulterior design of a federal government 
was, to secure all men under its exclusive jurisdiction in the enjoyment of 
these rights." The rapid progress of these doctrines, since their adoption, 
leave no doubt of their success, and the day is not fiir distant, when there 
will ))e no oppression, no slavery, no buying and selling Cod's image, outside 
the slave Stat(>s. Within those States we cannot reach it by legislation. 
Tliat must be done by their oym people ; but when the moral and religious sen- 
timent of this people shall be concentrated into one focus of burning contempt 
for those who scourge, degrade, and brutalize their fellow-men, slavery will 
disap))ear from the States, and our country will soon be purified from the crimes 
of slavery. 

Many discreet and patriotic men tliink we should make military preparations, 
in a manner corresponding with that of our Southern friends. I answer, 
we have no necessity for such ja-eparation. Ours is the cause of truth and 
justice, which needs no arms, no violence, no shedding of blood. The advo- 
cates of slavery are differently situated ; theirs is the cause of oppression, in- 
justice, and crime. It can only be maintained by violence, by arms, and by 
l)loodsh(!d. 

Nine slave States are at this time agitated by servile insurrections. White 
peo])l(," are murdered daily, and daily slaves are shot down by their masters, 
without trial, while otliers arc hanged under lynch law. Each murder, 
whether of blacks or whites, begets new fears and creates new alarms, which 
coiitinuiilly torment the imaginations of both masters and slaves. Now, I 
regani it our duty to tliosc; slaves, and thos(^ masters, to remain in the 
Union, so that, when tht^y shall ap])ly to our federal executive for protection, 
we may give just, righteous, and constitutional protection to both master and 



LETTER FROM HON. CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS. 9 

slave, by securing each in the enjoyment of his life, his liberty, and the 
avails of his own labor, according to the intentions and expectations of 
those who founded the government. 

I think we should remain in the Union, not for the purpose of upholding 
and extending slavery, but for the purpose of upholding and extending liberty. 
If we unite upon the doctrines put forth in our Republican platform, our 
success cannot be delayed nor postponed. For the first time since the adop- 
tion of the Constitution, the fundamental truths on which our government was 
founded, were placed in issue before the country in June last. In November 
we carried eleven sovereign States, comprising nearly two-thirds of the free pop- 
ulation of the Union, and now, Republican Governors preside over fourteen of 
the most important, most populous, and wealthy organizations of our federal 
Union. Our platform is broad as the family of man ; it is based on j^rinci- 
ples which are eternal as the throne of heaven. Truth, like its author, is 
omnipotent. Our cause, at this moment, commands the political, the moral, 
and the religious influence of the good and worthy of the nation. It is the 
cause of freedom, of morality, of religion, of civilization. It is stronger than 
armies, more potent than the combined influences of oppression and tyranny, 
com))ined with armies. 

Already the advocates of slavery falter in their efforts to establish that 
institution in Kansas. Should they, however, proceed in that nefarious 
work, the total overthrow of the Democratic party is certain. Should they 
fall back — should the slave power recede from its infamous designs, their pres- 
tige will be gone, their sceptre of power will have departed for ever. Let us 
but continue firm in our position ; let us but hold the oppressors at bay for a 
few years, and the rapid increase of our free population will perfect our tri- 
umph. Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington, will soon be added to our list of 
free States. The laws of nature 'and of God are co-workers with g(jod men. 
Acting in harmony with them, no earthly power can resist our progress. 

In conclusion, you will permit me to say, that, while I admit and will 
maintain the right of every man fully to express his views, and compare 
ideas with those around him, I think our duty and policy unite in urging us 
to maintain the Union as it is, and to reject all propositions to form a new 
Union with the polygamists of Utah or the slaveholders of Cuba ; that we 
should be active and energetic in our efforts to restore the government to its 
original position in favor of freedom ; that we should increase the number of 
free States, until the slave power shall be dwarfed to an insignificant por- 
tion of our federal Union ; that no man shall be elected to any office, who hesi- 
tates to exert his political and moral influence to carry out the designs of 
those who established our government ; and that we shall continue to arouse 
the puldic conscience of the nation, until oppression shall cease to exist out- 
side of the slave States. *We will then say to the slaveholders of those States, 
unbind the heavy burdens and let the oppressed go free ; or, if you prefer to 
maintain that institution, " perish' with it/' 

For the honor of your invitation, please accept, for yourself and associates, 
my thanks. Very respectfully, 

J. R. GIDDINGS. 



LETTER FROM HON. CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS. 

Boston, January 10, 1857. 
Rev. T. W, Higginson, "Worcester, Mass. : 

Dear Sir, — I have received your invitation, on behalf of the Committee 
of Arrangements, for a Convention to be held on the 15th inst., " to cousider 



10 APPENDIX. 

the practicability, probability and expediency of a separation between the free 
and the slave States," to be present, or else to express some opinions on the 
subject in question. 

I am well aware that my study of the slave-question in the United States 
began much later than that of many respectable individuals who have 
adopted very opposite conclusions to mine. It is about fourteen years since 
I reached the conviction that it was the duty of every man having the inter- 
ests of his cojuntry at heart, to form in his mind some definite plan upon 
which to regulate his share of the pulilic action. But even then, the persons to 
whom I allude had made up their minds that nothing would do short of an 
entire separation of the free States from all community of interest with 
slaveholders. One of the first things, therefore, which I was called to do, 
was to examine as carefully as I could the grounds upon which this proposition 
was maintained. 

The result of my labor was, that neither as a moral, as a social, nor as a 
political question, could I give an affirmative answer to the doctrine of a sep- 
aration. My reasons for this could not l)e emln-aced within the limits of a 
letter, nor do I suppose that it would be worth while to give them. It is 
enough to say, that I regard the government which has been instituted in this 
country as one which will run its term as all other human governments have 
done, and that all efforts to cut it short are simply futile. It is not perfect, 
nor approaching to perfection, I admit. But it works better thus far for the 
good of the people tlum any other system that I know of, and quite as well 
as any new one likely to be adopted at tliis day in its place. That it has 
faults, and grievous ones, no reasonable man can deny ; and its greatest de- 
fect is to be found in the anti-republican preponderance which it gives to the 
slaveholding class. But this is, in my view, not so much caused by any error 
in the instrument of government itself, as by the vacillation and weakness of 
the great body of freemen who have the power in their own hands to correct it, 
and yet refuse to use it. So long as they remain unconvinced of the ne- 
cessity of action, it is idle to expect a separation for this cause. And when- 
ever they do become so convinced, they can act in such a manner as to render 
separation unnecessary. 

Besides, I am inclined to the opinion, that the notion of no union with 
slaveholders is founded on a mistaken theory of morals. Conceding, if you 
please, that slaveholding is sin, as had as you can paint it, I do not under- 
stand it as a part of the Christian theory, that we are to have no society 
with it on that account. If such be the doctrine as to sinners, Avhere are we 
to stop at home, and who of us will have a right to claim exempti(m from ex- 
communication ? t do not mean to charge upon slaveholders, as a class, 
that th(?y are irredeemably wicked, any more than I should upon bankers, or 
brokers, or hotel-keepei-s, or liquor-selhTS, or horse-dealers, or any sort of tra- 
ders. In all these chusses, we very well know tltat every variety of moral dis- 
tinction is to ))i; found ; yet we an; not for that reason to condemn them all as 
utterly unworthy of a position in our community. If good is to be expected, 
it is from an opposite course, from continuing to mix with them, and learning 
to discriminate l)ctwoen the u))right aiul the dishonest, between the worthy 
and th(i unworthy ; from honoring tlie former, and endeavoring as far as pos- 
sible to ri'daim the latter. This is the only himn upcm which any govern- 
ment (ixti'ndiMl over huinan ))eint;;s so imperfect as we are on tliis glol)e can lie 
expectiMl to rest. On tliis l)asis, I am willing to continue indefinitely to live 
with slaveholders, even tliough some of them should trench a little upon 
my rights. I (-an at least hope, under such circumstances, to exert a little ben- 
eficial influence in the way of counteraction and amendment. There are high- 
minded, honorable, conscientious men and women scattered thick all over 
the slave Stiites. Their difficulties, in the way of acting' upon tiiis subject, 
aro very great ; and they jiro necessiirily timid, and avcree to confronting pub- 



LETTER FROM HON. CHARLES FRANCIS ADAUS. 11 

lib opinion. Shall we help this excellent class hy deserting it, and leaving 
that public opinion to retrograde until it sinks into impenetrable darkness ? 

I do not so read my duty. Great reforms in the social condition of na- 
tions must, in the nature of things, move slowly, if to be eflected without 
the risk of convulsions. No greater reform was ever proposed since the 
advent of the Saviour, than this which we advocate in America. It has taken 
nearly nineteen centuries to make the world Christian, and yet how much of 
it remains untouched by its humanizing doctrines ! It is not for us, then, to 
be out of patience because twenty or thirty years have passed away with- 
out any decisive results in this cause. Yet I would not do, as some have 
done, under the shelter of this r^soning ; I would not seek to excuse myself 
from doing any work, and put the whole trust in the natural course of Divine 
Providence, which will bring out its greatest ends by natural means. This 
is the sophistry of men false at the heart ; it is not the argument of a chim- 
ney-sweeper, it truly devoted to prosecuting his business. No ! The work ^is 
to be done with the Divine favor, but by human means. I am in favor of going 
on as we have been doing for years past, under the Constitution, and by the 
use of legitimate instruments. That much has already been efi'ected, it seems 
to me, cannot now be denied. But a great deal remains to be done. Public 
opinion is not yet in America what it should be on this subject. We who live 
within the limits of the United States, do not see slavery in the light that all 
people living outside see it. There is a familiarity with its most revolting fea- 
tures even among our most intelligent classes, which tones down the feelings with 
which we censure it. A very large part of the citizens of the free States are in 
the habit of considering the law of slavery, wherever it exists, to be in fact as 
valid and good law, and as firmly to be supported as if it had its foundations 
in the most perfect political justice. They believe in the dogma so boldly put 
forward by Mr. Clay some years ago, that " whatever the law makes property 
is property." Ahmg the entire border of the free States south and west, is to 
be found a population who sympathise in opinion more with slavery than with 
freedom. This whole region is missionai'y ground. And I think nothing 
really effective will be done in the way of reform of the system of the Gen- 
eral Government, until the doctrines of Liberty shall have been firmly estab- 
lished, where they are as yet either imperfectly understood or absolutely held 
in contempt. 

What does the so-called democratic party of the free States now know of 
the principles of the American Revolution? Where can it now venture to say 
a word in defence of human liberty ? Yet, although in a minority, it still holds 
in the aggregate a lai'ge number of our citizens. They have lost all their 
watch- Avords — and yet they continue a party. Their doctrines are now confined 
to the limits of extreme conservatism — of protection to all abuses, however 
great, because it is dangerous to disturb them. Do you think that you will 
weaken their hold on public opinion by proposing a separation? But a sepa- 
ration from whom? Not fi-om the slaveholders merely, for the work is not 
thorough whilst you still retain among yourselves a large class who sympa- 
thise with them more than they do with you. You must separate as well 
from these Democrats, the apologists of slaveholders, as from the slave-own- 
ers themselves. Do you not perceive that you change the issue at once from 
astronger to a weaker ground? You make a domestic question to divide upon 
at home, instead of one upon which to unite at home against the real evil 
which is outside of your borders. For my part, I cannot see the wisdom of this 
course, however others may view it. I think the obvious policy is to per- 
severe in reforming opinion in the free States — to educate the rising gene- 
rations in a determined hostility to the spread of slavery in Ameriea---to 
infuse someting of the genuine spirit of liberty into the still torpid regions 
of the middle and the western States — and then to trust to time and to the 
providence of God for a favorable reault. 



12 APPENDIX. 

I foar that already I have trespassed upon your patience. And yet I have 
scarcely touched the subject. If in the little I have said, I am so unlucky as to 
differ with some whose individual character and purity of motive command 
my esteem, I trust that I have said nothing in an offensive spirit, or which 
will render me liable to be misunderstood. This cause will never be aided by 
strife among its sincere upholders. There is room for all to work, even 
though they may not all join in one direction. 

I am, with great respect, your friend, 

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS. 



LETTER FROM HON. EDWARD WADE. 

Washington, Jan. 14, 1857. 
Rev. Tuos. W. Higginson : 

Dear Sir,— Your favor, enclosing the proceedings of a meeting of citizens 
of Wureester, Mass., w^as received in due time, but unavoidable business en- 
gagements have delayed an answer until the "eleventh hour." The objects 
contemplated by the meeting on the 15th inst. are verily of a magnitude suffi- 
cient to demand the most anxious consideration of every Christian, patriot, 
and philanthropist. I feel as deeply as any man can feel, the enormous mis- 
chiefs which have already resulted from the admission of slavery as an element 
of representative power into what, excluding two or three other blemishes of 
a like character, would otherwise be a faultless Constitution. But you know 
the effect of " dead flies in the ointment of the apothecary " ; so these most 
disastrous admissions bid fair to destroy that Constitution which, it is said, 
could not have been established without them. Still, I do not admit that 
the Constitution of the United States, rightly and Aones/l/y construed, fur- 
nishes any guaranty for the existence, much less the extension of slavery ; 
but I do admit, that the concession of such a power in the Constitution leaves 
us of the free States no alternative but secession or submissson to slaveholding 
domination. When this last horn of the dilemma shall be found hopelessly 
goring us, I sliall have as little scruple as any one about the right or the duty 
of taking the side of freedom at every hazard. 

I am fully aw'are that the treachery of free State office-seekers, in the hope 
of slaveholding support for national offices, has yielded the pro-slavery con- 
etructiim of the Constitution to the slaveholders. But I know as well, too, 
that it but re(iuires tlie patriotic unity of the people of the free States, to 
rescue the Constitution from the hands of its violators. But this unity of the 
free States, it is said by croakers and uiijirineipled office-seekers at the North, 
and howled by tlu; slaveholders, will dissolve the I'nion. Well, if so, then 
so be it ; for one thing is absolutely certain, and that is, that the moral and 
physical necessities of free and slave institutions do constitute irreconcilable 
contradictions ; and it only needs time to develop the destructive operations of 
these hostile elements. This view alone satisfies my mind tliat, in the nature 
of things, the institutions of the two sections of the country must become 
homog>!ri(M)us, or a separation is inevitable. But these institutions can only 
become iiomogoneous ))y a conquest the one of the other, by either a jiliysical or 
moral contest; or by the comliination of l)oth. Hence, to know wliieh of 
those systems will vi'el'l to tlnvother, it needs only to l)e known which of these 
has th(! stmngest ii'dluence over human nature, taking into the account man's 
csipricious oscillations lietween good and evil. 

These views, in my own mind, bear directly on the question to be considered 
by the proposed meeting at >Yurcester. Viewing tlte matter in this light, 



LETTER FROM HON. GEORGE R. RUSSELL. 13 

I can concur with the assertion in your letter, viz. : that " the existing Union 
is a fiiilure." I lx>lieve that while the masses of the people of the free States 
are but very partially instructed on the nature of the relation of slavery to 
the Federal Government, and the non-slaveholders of the slave States are in 
utter ignorance of these relations, the agitation of active measures for a dis- 
Bolution of the Union are, at best, premature. The people of the free States, 
even, have not yet exerted, within constitutional limits, the maximum of 
their moral and political force against the atrocious system of American sla- 
very. *•# # # # # # # # 

The slaveholders have too little confidence in the inherent strength of the 
slave system to leave it to the silent workings of its antagonist Liberty. They 
will provoke hostility by throwing up redoubts about their " domestic institu- 
tions." "There is no peace to the wicked" — so that our own quietists 
may as well hang their harps on the willows. The slavery excitement is more 
intense now, more widely spread, and more deeply seated in the hearts of the 
people, than at any former period. The tide has been rising, since the voice 
of Mr. Garrison was first lifted in behalf of the oppressed. It must be 
suffered to continue its rising, in the way its first ripple was stirred on the 
sluggish surface of Northern society. The agitation of the slave question is 
up, and " will not down." This is needful, and, in my opinion, it is better 
for the cause, taking human nature as it is, than to attempt to take a step 
60 radical and startling, and so well calculated to frighten the timid, and 
encourage the mercenary, as a proposition to dissolve the Union. It is the 
" little leaven " that " leaveneth the whole lump." The " dough " of free- 
dom will be more likely to be soured by such yeast as disunion, than to be 
transformed into healthful food. Still, no one can say how soon this step may 
be needed, to save us all from the dishonor and crime of sustaining an institu- 
tion so contrary to nature, to Revelation, and to every instinct and sentiment of 
humanity, as American slavery. For, rather than to give the strength, moral 
and political, of the people of the Free States to the extension and perpetuity 
of slavery, let the Union perish ; for it is better, infinitely better, thai any 
artificial structure, designed and cajialile of being made an instrum 'ut of 
unmeasured good, should perish for ever, rather than turned into an engine 
for the perpetuity of the curse and shame of human slavery. 

Most truly, yours, &c., 

EDWARD WADE. 



LETTER FROM HON. GEORGE R. RUSSELL. 

Jamaica Plain, Jan. 12, 1857. 
Rev. Thos. W. Higginson, Worcester : 

Dear Sir — I cannot attend the Convention to which you have invited me, 
nor do I think that the time has come for the North to formally propose a 
dissolution of the Union. The extreme South would gladly see us take the in- 
itiative, and it is a part of its policy to drive us to measures which may comjijcl 
us to become aggressors. There are, doubtless, those who are looking to the 
formation of a Southern empire, and as they are willing to buy when they 
cannot steal, provided they can as usual put their hands into Northern 
pockets, they will cling to us until they have exhausted our resources, or, giv- 
ing up negotiation, resort to the more summary and congenial modes of 
piracy and murder to secure whatever territory they may deem necessary to 
carry out their gigantic felony. When we are no longer useful, they will 
kick us out, provided we submit to the operation, or adopt the more ju'efera- 
ble method of driving us to rebellion. ***#### 



14 APPENDIX. 

I believe that there are elements in operation, which will cruml)le it 
[slavei'v] into the dust, and it is better they should work, secretly and silent- 
ly gnawing at its very heart, than that their action should be anticipated 
by opan and extraneous influences. If, however, I am wrong in this sup- 
position, — if that infernal tyranny is to sit crouching like an incubus on the 
breast of the nation, and there is no other hope for its overthrow than an 
utter dissolution of the compact which holds these States in confederacy,— 
the sooner it is resorted to, the better it will be for us and our children. 

I say this with no unkind feeling towards the South, ancl with no desire 
to check her jjrosperity, or to Iciive her in that helpless imbecility to which 
separation would reduce her. She cannot he supported by conventions, which 
periodically determine that she shall be powerful. Resolutions will not alone 
create national wealth. Commerce and manufactures do not arise at the bid- 
ding ; and the slave driver's whip is not the magician's wand to convert steril- 
ity and weakness into affluence and strength. They are not her friends who 
counsL'l her to cut ofl' the arm that sustains her, or to provoke the M'itlKlraw- 
al of the only power which gives her vitality. Yet, if she is bent on self- 
destruction, and can only gain knowledge through the bitter experiences of 
sorrow and repentance, let her go. We can spare all, and be the better for 
the loss. There has been enough of threatening. Let us have a little action. 

«• Stand not upon the order of your going, 
But go at once." 

You will leave behind you, men, wealth, science, and energy, that will 
build up a Republic which shall he the marvel and the hope of humanity ; 
in which a tyrant cannot dwell, nor a slave breathe. We would not impt^de 
your retreat by a single entreaty. We have tried, gentlemen, and been answered 
by insult. We have confided in your honor, and been cheated ; in your gen- 
erosity, and been lauglied at. We have been cajoled by compromise, and lost 
everything ; and we trust you no longer. We have no faith in your promises, 
no belief in your sincerity, no respect for your character. We have exhibited 
too much of the conciliation which savors (jf subserviency, too much of expla- 
nation and apology where there should have been eitlier silent scorn or open 
defiance. Northern men have never yet sown submission, without reaping 
contempt. 

Whether this is, or is not, the time for the North to agitate the question 
of separation, it certainly has al)undant reason to justify itself in so doing. 
While I have strong doubt as to the present expediency of the measure, I hon- 
or those, who, feeling tlie necessity, come forward as picmeers, without 
counting on public a^jproval or repro))ation. That many will keep aloof, 
who secr((tly exult in the movement, may be expected li'om the experience 
of all past time. That others will condemn, with the accustomed routine of 
holy horror, which is always expended on proposed reforms, is as natural a re- 
sult as the dismay of true helievers at the desecration of their idol. 

But the Union is not an African fetish, to be blindly worshipped, but 
it is to be honored or despised in proi)ortion to the measure of its powers 
for good or evil. It maybe a blessing or a curse, and must Ije judged ac- 
cordingly. 

It is not surprising that some sliould think it time to weigh its value, when 
shivery is the declared policy of its voters ; wlien old landmarks are removed, 
and tlie black flood sweeps over State and Territory, — or if for a time arrested, 
it is liecause some moris mighty villany is in contemplation ; when a false 
and corrupt basis gives an unecpial representation to the country, and allows 
the Slave States a monstrous a<ivaiitage, without any (Himpensation to the 
North; when the constitutional decisions of a jiro-slavery Supreme Court 
arc uniformly on the side of wrong ; when Southern interests are implicated. 



LETTER FROM FRANCIS JACKSON. 15 

and can as confidently be predicted as the coming on of night ; when free 
speech is stopped by sneaking and cowardly assassination, and the perpetra- 
tors are honored for a deed which should have clothed them with the convict's 
parti-colored garments ;when Northern men are daily threatened with violence 
in the capital of the country, and in some States, the law gives no protection 
to their lives and property ; — in a word, when the whole land is governed by 
a petty band of slaveholders, who consider every question according to its 
bearing on slavery, and who are turning what should be a great and glorious 
nation, into a disgraceful and appalling despotism. 

With all these wrongs, and many more, crowding before us, we have in vain 
sought redress. Every concession on our part has been followed by more 
flagrant outrages, and our powers of endurance are by no means commensu- 
rate to the perseverance and fertile invention of our tormentors. 

This state of things cannot last. Those who whine about the Union, 
.and, bidding us forget our injuries, assure us that in no possible event can there 
be a separation ol the States, either mistake the signs of the times, or are 
deplorably ignorant of the character of their countrymen. 

We would keep the Union as long as it is worth keeping, and no lono^er. 
When it becomes hopelessly worthless, involving us in constant shame and 
degradation, it can be, ought to be, and will be broken up. 
Respectfully yours, 

G. R. RUSSELL. 



LETTER FROM FRANCIS JACKSON. 

Boston, January 14, 1857. 
Thomas W. Higginson : 

Dear Sir — I regret my inability to attend the Disunion Convention to- 
morrow. 

Next to the abolition of slavery, there is no object which I so much desire to 
see accomplished as the political divorce of the North from its most foul con- 
nection with negro slavery. 

If, formerly, any thing was wanting to awaken the North to a just sense 
of the sin and folly of continuing in union with the slave States, and, of course, 
responsible for the infamous system of slavery which exists there, surely, the 
experience of the past four years must suffice to convince the most skeptical, 
and the most selfish, that nothing but continual turmoil and dishonor can be 
expected to result from any longer connection with the slave States. 

1 rejoice to know that the political absurdity of endeavoring to unite in one 
community, under one government, two such antagonisms as Freedom and 
Slavery, is now fast becoming apparent to the Northern people ; and we may 
expect, ere long, a general acquiescence in the necessity of Disunion. 

Tlie course of events, for the past twenty years, but more especially, the 
astounding developments of the Slave Power during the past four years', most 
conclusively show that a continuance in this Union is sure to result in the 
establishment of slavery, throughout its whole length and breadth. 

If any doubt this conclusion, after witnessing the action of every branch of 
this Government — Executive, Legislative, and Judicial — then, no evidence 
will suffice to convince them but the final completion of the iniquity. 

At the early part of the anti-slavery movement, the advocates of fre(>dom 
were continually taunted with the question, — " W fiy don't you go and preach 
to the South — there is no slavery in Massachusetts ? ' ' That question answered 
itself long ago. 



16 , APPENDIX. 

Now the advocates of Disunion are taunted with the quest'on, — " WJiere 
are you going to draw the line? " Our reply is, — Let the line draw itself, 
while we continue " to reason of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to 
come." 

England imposed heavy burdens upon our revolutionary fathers, which they 
feared would enslave them ; whereupon, they went for Disunion as a rem- 
edy. They decided that question at Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill, and 
Dorchester Heights. All this they did, without knowing where the line would 
be drawn, or how many of the Colonies would take sides with England. 

The line drew itself then, but the North did not find it out until the fol- 
lowing year, when that glorious Declaration was issued at Philadelphia, point- 
ing it out. 

Believing most firmly that Disunion is the only true remedy for slavery 
in this country, I welcome every honest effort in that direction. 

FRANCIS JACKSON. 



LETTER FROM HON. 0. W. ALBEE. 

Senate Chamber, Boston, Jan. 12, 1857. 
Rev. Thos. W. Higginson : 

Dear Sir — I thank you for the invitation to be present at the Convention 
to be holden at Worcester the 15th mst. 

Respecting as I do, all men who act up to their convictions of duty, how- 
ever much those convictions may differ from my own , it would give me pleasure 
to be present at your discussions, were not other labors and obligations 
pressing upon me, and demanding my immediate attention. If the Union 
cannot stand the practical working of tlie truths enunciated in the Declara- 
, tion of American Independence, it seems to me its value has been calculated. 
'I am not, however, prepared to believe that the triumph of freedom re- 
quires the dissolution of the Union. Whether it docs or not, I am ready to 
reiterate and stand by the sentiments I have held and advocated ever since 
the contest upon the repeal of the ^lissouri . Compromise began — viz. : Let 
freedom be preserved to Kansas at all hazards. 

Yours, very respectfully, 

O. W. ALBEE. 



LETTER FROM REV. HENRY M. DEXTER. 

Boston, Jan. 14, 1857. 
Rev. Tnos. W. Higginson : 

Dear Sir — Your polite note from the Committee of Arrangements, inviting 
my presence at the Convention to bo held in Worcester to-morrow, lies be- 
fore me. 

In rt']ily I beg to say, that, while I look forward to a separation of the Free 
from the Slave States as an event that is very possible, and that ought to be 
consented to by all good men in ]>reieronce to perpetual subjection to the 
Slave Power, I do not see clearly that tlie time has yet come to despair of a 
renovation of the Government, and a delivery from those great and grievous 
evils which now exsit, without a resort to that last remedy. 

So beliining, I could not in conscience take part in the deliberations of your 
proposed Convention. 

I ain, very truly and respectfully, yours, 

HENRY M. DEXTER. 



LETTER FROM EEY. DR. BELLOWS. 



LETTER FROM REV. DR. BELLOWS. 

New York, January 6th, 1857. 
Mt Dear Sir : 

Your invitation to me to participate in the Convention at "Worcester, on 
Thursday, January 15th, called "to consider the practicability, probability, 
and expediency of a separation between the free and slave States, and to take 
such measures as the condition of the times may require," has been received, 
and is respectfully declined. 

As you are kind enougli to ask some communication from me, I seize the 
privilege of stating very frankly the reasons why I cannot join your Conven- 
tion, and I am the more anxious to do this, because you base your invitation, 
not merely on my "general position, but upon the fearless treatment of the 
subject of the Union " in my published sermon of November 2d. As I took 
no ground then not carefully measured, or from which I wish to recede a 
hair, it seems important, when my opinions attract the notice of a con- 
scientious and intelligent body like yours, to have it distinctly understood 
what they are, and how entirely they differ from those of Disunionists. 
******** 
The last election, however, has shown that the North is waking up in 
conscience, courage, and sensibility to her duty, not to herself alone, but to the 
Nation, the Union, and Humanity. The astonishing effect of the free press in 
arousing the people, indicates what will be the triumph of another election. 
The South sees for the first time that the North is in earnest, feels its power, 
and is determining to exercise it. And' this is having an admiralile effect 
upon the discussion of the subject. 

It has already forced the intellectual leaders and active statesmen of the 
South to intrench themselves in a position of absolute defiance to the public 
opinion of the world. They have been driven for the first time to a step — 
the next to complete surrender — i. e., the assertion of a code of morals, and 
a style of reasoning, entirely and exclusively their own, and which makes 
them moral and rational outlaws from the public morality of Christendom. 
What are the leaders of the Southern press, but intellectual pirates and 
moral fillibusters ? They have been compelled to take the ground that slavery 
is no sin, and no misfortune — a righteous, useful, beneficent institution, 
deserving heroic defence, national adoption, and unlimited extension. The 
great ability, logical candor, manly audacity, and even moderation of man- 
ner with which these propositions have been maintained, have excited my 
intense admiration. Would tliat the other and better side had been sustained 
with equal strength and calmness ! But, what is left to those who are shut 
up in a fortress against which the world is combined ? who defy the policy of 
the age, the sentiments of Christendom, the fundamental principles of economy, 
justice and humanity ? The only step left for the South is to send in a flag 
of truce, and propose conditions of surrender. She has shot the last ball in her 
arsenal, eaten her last biscuit, and may now honorably confess that her position 
is desperate, and throw herself upon the mercy of the country, and the world. 
In these circumstances, I do not see "a rapid increase in the hostility be- 
tween the two sections of the Union." On the contrary, I think the hos- 
tility reached its head in the last campaign — has begun to decline — as the 
movements of the Government in Kansas and in Congress appear to indicate — 
and is never again likely to do any thing but diminish. To make this certain, 
nothing is necessary but the maintenance of an absolute determination on tho 
part of the free States, to deny, and i-esist, and pi-event the extension of 
slavery — Union or no Union. Let our overwhelming strength, supported by 
the public opinion of the world, be seen and felt, and the South will and must 



18 APPENDIX. 

decline further controversy, and yield to an irresistible necessity. Jt is only 
as rivals, as equals in rights and powers, as hemispheres of one political globe, 
that we have maintained mutual liatred and jealousy. Let it be declared 
that we are not mere equals, or rivals, but the free States are the national 
policy and destiny, and this hatred will cease. The free States are, by the 
spirit and letter of the Constitution, by vast superiority in population, by 
representative rights and legislative powers, the legitimate controllers both of 
the foreign and domestic policy of the country. Mistake, apathy, folly, fear 
in the use of this right and duty, have placed us in this balance, in which 
slavery and freedom, slave soil and free soil, slaveholders and freemen seem in 
a perfect equipoise of rights and powers, until the turning of the scale has 
unhappily come to be regarded as a matter of accident and uncertainty, of 
nice manoeuvre, or of bargain and compromise. 

To meet this state of things within my omi limited sphere of influence and 
responsibility, I maintained in the last campaign, and in my own pulpit in the 
sermon to which vou refer, the duty of resisting the extension of slavery at 
the risk of the Uiiion ; and to embolden those who regarded this consequence 
as prolmble, I gave some reasons for thinking disunion, if forced upon ua 
by the withdrawal of the South, a more supportable calamity to the North, 
than those who were trying to frighten Free Soilers from their Republicanism 
had represented it. But I was very far from expressing a desire for disunion, 
or from advocating separation, which I have never thought practicable, prob- 
able or expedient. It was as a throat from the South, that 1 braved disunion ; 
not as a proposition from the North, that I espoused it. 

What 1 desire now and always to maintain is this : That our conscien- 
tious opposition to the extension of -slavery is not to be alxited or colored by 
fears for the Union ; and that, so far as it depends on the North, we are to 
stop its extension, let the consequences to the Union — to the North or the 
South — be what they will. This ground I believe to be the safe ground — 
the Christian, humane, patriotic, constitutional, unsectional. Union-saving 
ground. 1 take it as a lover of the North and a lover of the South ; as a 
believer in the future of the United States. I take it as a hater of slavery, 
an undying foe to its extension, and a laborer for its overthrow and extinction 
in the speediest manner and time consistent with our whole duty as American 
Citizens. ***** 

With these sentiments, I cannot join your Convention, for I profess none 
of the articles of fiiith upon which' your call is founded. But as a friend 
of free debate, and a respecter of conscientious convictions, however unpopular 
or unwise, I wish you unlimited liberty of discusion, and anticipate no harm 
from your conferences to the Kcjiuldic. 

With the highest personal respect, yours truly, 

HENRY W. BELLOWS. 

Rev. Mr. Higginson, of the Worcester Convention. 



LETTER FROM PROF. C. E. STOWE. 

AxDOVER, Mass., Jan. 12, 1857. 
Rev. T. W. IIicGixsoN : 

Mv Dear Sir, — If I were in despair as to the Republic, as you seem to be, 
I should take tiie course which you adopt. But, when I reflect that the really 
determined, aggressive? slaveholders of the country are jirobably less than 150, ()<>() 
against more tlian 20,000,000 of jicople ; when I perceive that their cause 



LETTER FROM PROF. C. E. STOWE. 19 

is sustained entirely by falsehood and violence, without one particle] of truth 
or goodness in its favor ; when I see what wonderful progress has been made 
during the last twenty-five years in enlightening our citizens in regard to the 
true nature of slavery, and its aggressions on all that is right and honorable ; 
while I expect that this process of enlightenment will go on with accele- 
ratmg rapidity, and the five years next to come do more than all the twenty- 
five years that have just passed ; I cannot help [^thinking it is the part of 
wisdom to hold on and vote, and help the 20,000,000 turn the 150,000 with 
their corruptions out of the house, (which they^had no business ever to 
occupy,) and not allow the 150,000 to turn out the 20,000,000, to whom the 
whole justly belongs. 

One or the other, I admit, must be done, and that soon. 

Very truly, yours, 

C. E. STOWE. 



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